


panache

by zoetropes



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Upside Down, Angst, Basically Everyone Needs a Hug, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Harringrove, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Burn, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Toxic Masculinity, billy moves to hawkins a few months after the end of season one, steve and nancy have already broken up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 57,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoetropes/pseuds/zoetropes
Summary: Billy learned he was ugly when he was six years old. // Steve sat, drunk and alone, on the ground, head pressed against the big beautiful window, and stared out at his swimming pool.or: The Hargroves move to Hawkins in April of 1984, five months after Barb Holland drowns in Steve's pool. Billy makes his presence known, with all the swiftness of a guillotine.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove & Neil Hargrove, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers & Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 55
Kudos: 260





	1. Ugly

Billy learned he was ugly when he was six years old. 

He’d never really thought of it, before. Beauty was an intangible thing: a thing, perhaps, for mothers, but not for him. His mother never called anyone ugly, not outright. There were comments, here and there, about his friend Scott’s mother. Scott’s mother let her hair hang long and flat and later joined the women’s rights movement. But Billy had never thought of the concept of ugliness in relation to himself. He always considered himself a sort of an immutable being. Thoughts in space. Words, conjured up from some vast astronomical vaults, gathered as sand in a bucket. Poured out his mouth, into the world, through which his consciousness moved. His body was incidental to this entire process.

He confronted it, full-faced, at age six, in his kitchen. It was his father who introduced him to the concept, as he did so many things. He was fighting with Billy’s mother over dinner, a common enough occurrence that Billy didn’t feel the need to rise from his seat. It wasn’t really dinner anymore; although the plates were still on the table, green beans half eaten, Billy knew better than to touch them, to scrape metal fork against ceramic plate and draw attention to himself. Instead, he counted the lines of the table’s wood grain and found faces in the swirls.

“You’re an ugly bitch, just like that kid of yours,” Billy’s dad had said. 

It was curious. Whenever he got mad, Neil always phrased it like Billy wasn’t his son, too. Billy didn’t get it. Whose was he? His mother’s? His father’s? Surely not his own.

Billy did get the word bitch. He said it three days later to a girl at school that kept chewing with her mouth open, because the sound made him feel like there were things crawling under his skin and he wanted her to feel a little bad about it. The school sent him home and Neil slapped him across the face.

Billy didn’t think his mom was ugly. He got upset sometimes, actually, because he thought she was so perfect that when he grew up he’d never be able to marry anyone as good as her. But he hadn’t put much thought into his own corporeality, other than that it got him around places and that he was a little shorter than the boys at school and that meant he had to ask Connor Mayhew to get books for him from the high shelf. 

That night, after the fighting and the inevitable snap, the hit that Billy almost, not really but almost, looked forward to, because it meant the fight would end and his dad would be so sorry and everyone would cry and then he could breathe again, after all that and after his parents went to bed and he stayed up doing the dishes and scraping the green beans into the disposal, Billy dragged a stool into the bathroom and stood on it and looked at himself in the mirror. 

He poked at his nose. Sort of broad, with an end like a bubble, like a lollipop. Rounded. Lips that were all points, the slightest downturn at the corners. He smiled and he still looked sad. Big chin. Eyes just the wrong side of the close. Small ears. He wasn’t skinny, like some of the boys. Not as fat as a few of them. He was sort of average in a lot of ways. 

Billy knew that his dad said things he didn’t mean sometimes, but when he did say something untrue he’d admit it. The next morning, when the sun would stream in through the window and the day would still feel fresh and expansive: “You aren’t stupid, Billy.” His dad would say, “You just need to put the work in. You should be able to do anything you want. You aren’t stupid, so you don’t have an excuse to quit.”

But Neil never took this one back. So Billy figured it must be true. He couldn’t tell on his own if he was ugly. He was hard-pressed to conjure up many people at all that he thought were ugly. He didn’t think any of the boys at school were. Maybe one girl? There was one with a particularly mean face. But mostly, they just looked like themselves. Buck teeth, gap teeth, hair that stuck up funny. He wished he could ask his dad which ones were ugly. Then he’d have a frame of reference.

It was confusing, because his mom often called him beautiful. She told him he looked like a little angel, or a little knight of the round table. She played with his curls and read him Le Morte d’Arthur, translating as she went. Billy loved to listen to her French. He never really absorbed the language the way he thought she wanted him to, because he was too focused on the sounds and the melody and the care with which she pronounced it. She called him Galahad, perfect Galahad who never sinned and found the Holy Grail where no one else could. 

But Billy knew, deep down, someplace in those astronomical vaults, someplace immutable, that he was not Galahad, that he could never be Galahad. Billy knew that if he was sent by his King to find the grail, he would fail, would fall, would be unworthy. Because there was something wrong about him.

People called him pretty. He got older, his hair got longer, his back got California sun-kissed. He walked barefoot down to the beach and older girls giggled at him. He hit his growth spurt. Everybody called him pretty. The issue was that, although Billy’s dad didn’t say it often, Billy could see him thinking it. Seeing it. The ugliness. Billy’s dad knew him awfully and knew him better than anyone. So Billy put two and two together. Reconciled the compliments, the appraisals, and the invariable fact of ugliness discerned even from early childhood by the man closest to him. 

He came to realize that this ugliness must come not from the expanse of his cheek or the set of his eyes, distasteful as they were for him to look at– Billy began to obsessively stare at himself in the mirror at nights, count the mistakes– no, that wasn’t the ugliness his father had seen. It was something inside him, in his personality, in that immutable being that had lived and thought before speech. It wasn’t the Billy that people saw that was ugly. It was the Billy that people got to know. 

So Billy stopped letting people get to know him. Except his mom. And then his mom got called an ugly bitch one too many times and left. After the first few weeks, Billy only really let himself think about that very late at night, when there was no one around to see him cry. And then it was just Billy and his dad, his dad who knew him, who helped Billy learn that no one else should ever be allowed that close.

After mom left, Billy switched schools. He missed people, but he was pretty sure they weren’t going to miss him for long, so he got over it. He had a new house, further from the beach, from the waves, from the footprints of his mother buried somewhere deep beneath layers of sand, and closer to his dad’s new job. Billy made friends with boys who wore boots even in the summer and gave each other stick and poke tattoos and offered Billy cigarettes from little packs they stole from the convenience stores. One boy named Sean liked to wear a tee and roll up a pack in one sleeve so it jutted out, a hard rectangle on the curve of his shoulder. 

He didn’t let them tattoo him, but he did let himself come home smelling like smoke and, worse, cheap beer. He was twelve. His dad hit him harder than he ever had. Billy knew some of those boys whose dads were always on their cases, one whose dad was a drunk, a mean drunk. Neil wasn’t a drunk. Neil was a man of discipline. 

Billy was weak, and he went to school with a black eye and dodged out the back at lunchtime to smoke again with those boys. It tasted good. It burned on the way down. Billy thought about the Knights of the Round Table and Lancelot’s weakness and sin in laying with Guinevere, the King’s wife. He thought about how, because of that weakness, Lancelot was never allowed to see the grail, to hold it, to touch something divine. He thought about his mom calling him beautiful and inhaled smoke until he coughed and his eyes screwed up with tears, and then dropped the butt on the asphalt and crushed it beneath his shoe.

Neil met Susan when Billy was thirteen. Neil was a security guard at a bank, Susan was a teller. He brought her a different little gift every week until she agreed to marry him. Billy remembered the story of how Neil had met mom, buying a book in the bookstore she worked at, how they had talked and she had charmed him with all the authors she could quote. How he had loved to hear her speak French. How she had loved the way he smiled, how she convinced him to shave off that stupid mustache. 

With Susan, Neil grew the mustache back. He gave her presents. He gave her a little rabbit figure that had been meticulously carved from a block of wood. The day he gave it to her was the day she said yes. Neil had taken the rabbit from Billy’s room. Billy’s mom had made it for Billy the week after he was born. Neil told him, when he took the rabbit, that Billy was too old for toys. Billy knew what he really meant: Billy did not deserve something so lovable. It should go to someone who knows how to love.

It did. She did. Neil and Billy moved to a house by the beach. A house that was Susan’s. Susan’s, and Max’s.

Max was nine years old. Just a child, really, but a child that Billy hated more than anything. More than his friends, the ones who stopped being his friends sometime last year, who had called him crazy after he’d very nearly knocked out Sean’s teeth in a drunken fist fight. Billy hated her so much– more, sometimes, than he hated his dad.

Because Max was… a child. And nobody expected her not to be. She didn’t know the rules, didn’t follow them. Always needed telling twice. Billy didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the game, because Neil would tell her to turn her lights off and go to bed and she would promise to do it, and Neil would have to come back in ten minutes later and tell her again, and she still wouldn’t do it. She wasn’t scared. She should be scared. 

And the thing was that Max was nine, four years older than Billy had been when he’d learned he was ugly. Billy couldn’t remember the first time his dad hit him, the first time he saw his dad back his mother into a wall. He could remember the first time his dad had thrown a plate at him, and that was still two years younger than Max was right now. Max wasn’t too young. And Max certainly wasn’t better behaved. 

The reasonable conclusion was that in whatever way Billy was awful, was ugly, Max was whole. Neil didn’t have to go so hard on her because she wasn’t as broken. This made sense to Billy, in an abstract way. It was harder to hold onto in practicality.

They were sitting around the dining table, a new practice they’d picked up since they had moved into the house, and one that Neil hadn’t facilitated since Billy’s mom had gone. Max was pushing her beans around her plate, poking at them with a little click, click, click of tines against ceramic. 

Billy tightened his hand into a fist on his thigh. “You not like the food?” 

“I’m not hungry.” She turned those eyes on him. Those soulful, sunken eyes. Even then, she was so angry. Billy thought: what for? With what right? 

“Can’t leave the table until you clear the plate,” Billy shot back. This was true. Unless it was a night like one of the old nights, the ones with abandoned green beans and faces in the table wood, plates had to be cleared. And those nights, the dark nights, never happened here with Susan. Not once.

“I ate as much as I could.” Max narrowed her eyes. 

Billy could feel his blood boiling. He pressed his fist hard into his leg, wondered if he could bruise through pressure alone. “Finish the fucking beans, Maxine.”

“Billy, enough.” His dad’s tone was sharp, and Billy went cold. Released the fist. Looked up, from dad to Max to Susan to dad. Looked down at his plate. 

They’d been quiet a moment, and then Susan had started chattering about some sort of bake sale. She was good at that. Billy had never been good at defusing situations. Mostly because it never worked. The only way to get through it was to brace for impact, take the hit, go to bed. At least the pain made sense. It was honest.

They finished dinner, Max scraped her uneaten beans into the disposal, and she went to her room. Neil looked at Susan, Susan looked at Billy, Susan left the room. Billy didn’t know what that was. His mom had never looked at his dad like that. Like she was asking for permission. Like she was deferring. 

Maybe, Billy thought, that’s why his dad never hit Susan.

Billy sat there, dumbly, with Neil just looking at him, not saying anything. He never wanted to get up out of the seat. Or he wanted to run out the front door, run to the beach, run into the ocean until it overtook him. He stood, picked up his own plate, then, perilously, like sticking his hand into the jaws of the lion, reached for his dad’s. 

Neil’s hand fastened around Billy’s wrist, already tight, tight enough to bruise. He wasn’t playing. “You don’t talk back to your sister, Billy,” Neil said.

“She talked back to me, dad.” Billy didn’t argue– he’d learned not to argue– that was one of the rules, the rules that no one said out loud but that he had learned in watercolor black and blues– but he didn’t understand. The rules changed. The game changed. There was something he wasn’t getting. “She wasn’t eating, I was trying to get her to eat–”

The grip tightened, and his father yanked him in closer. The edge of the table pressed hard into Billy’s hip as he was tilted down at an awkward angel. “You don’t curse at your sister.”

“What did you want me to do? What am I supposed to do?” And it was a real question, one he needed to know the answer to, but he also couldn’t help himself: “And she’s not my sister.”

Sharp movement. A slap upside the head. It was quick, snapped his head forward, but didn’t really hurt as much as Billy knew it could have. Just a warning. “Whose house is this?”

Susan’s, Billy wanted to say. This is Susan’s house. And where the hell is she? In her room, not listening, not knowing, plausible deniability. And it was also Max’s house. Her room was her room, had always been her room, since she and Susan had packed up and left Mr. Mayfield and got this place for themselves. This wasn’t Billy’s home. Billy hadn’t had a home in years.

Too late. Hadn’t answered. Neil squeezed and squeezed on his wrist, and Billy began to panic, began to think about bones snapping, about breaking inwards, and he instinctively tried to pull away, which only made it worse. “Whose house is this?” Neil repeated. Waited. “Say it. Say it!”

“Yours,” Billy gasped, quietly, because they were being quiet. He wasn’t sure who they were being quiet for. That was a new phenomenon. Susan, he supposed. Susan’s peace of mind. Or maybe Max. Billy didn’t know what Neil thought Max would learn if she didn’t hear this, see this, see what happens. 

“Right.” And Neil let go. And his expression was casual again, normal, and Billy thought stupidly that this must not have been as big of a deal as he thought it was. His wrist was already purpling, and that panicked little flutter in his chest was still sure that they’d been hairs away from something breaking, but… it hadn’t broken, had it? And now Neil was standing and telling him to do the dishes and not even looking at him, not even looking at him as he left the room.

Billy did the dishes. He supposed it hadn’t been a big deal. He was fine. But he did get it, now, the way in which this had become Neil’s house, with all the swiftness of a guillotine.

He didn’t call Max out in front of his dad again, after that. Sometimes she would complain or talk back and Billy would begin to see that hardening in Neil’s eyes, and Billy would kick her under the table. Max never got it. Sometimes she would say “Ow!” out loud and Billy would remember how stupid she was. 

She must be stupid, Billy thought. Months turned into a year; somewhere in there was the wedding, which Billy mostly checked out during to stop from going crazy. It was pretty and white and Lutheran, and Neil promised to respect, trust, help, and care for Susan. Billy stood behind his father and let his eyes glaze over and tried not to laugh. Max looked entirely uncomfortable in her dress, ten years old and still so tomboyish. That was one of the only things Billy respected about her.

He respected it because Neil had taken issue with Max’s personal stylings and bought her a few dresses. They looked kind of expensive, for them. Billy knew how much money they had. His dad yelled about it enough. There was yelling, then, after the wedding. That was it, though. But Neil gave her these awful little dresses, in yellow and plaid with frills and stupid collars, and Billy had truly laughed out loud when he saw them. Max didn’t laugh. 

Max didn’t wear them, either. It was one of the only times that her obstinacy, that resolute set to her jaw that meant she was not going to budge, was for a good reason. Neil made that kind of under his breath but just loud enough to hear little comment: “Got a girl who thinks she’s a boy and a boy who thinks he’s a girl.” He meant Billy’s hair. Billy was growing it out, liking the way it curled on the nape of his neck, liked the way it felt like something of his own. 

Susan had said nothing at all, Max had stormed out of the room, and Billy had been the only one to be smart about it. He stayed, watched football with his dad in silence, then, later, when Max was brushing her teeth, he had taken the Zeppelin tour shirt he’d gotten from Sean back when they were still friends, and left it folded on the end of Max’s bed. It was big on her, but she wore it the next three days in a row until he had to poke her in the head and tell her it stank and she had to wash it.

See, that, he could respect. But he figured that she must just be stupid. Because if she wasn’t stupid, then she didn’t have an excuse. Years passed, and Billy was in high school, and Max wasn’t a little kid anymore, and she’d been around long enough to learn. It was about four months after the wedding that Neil first hit Billy in front of Susan. And then it sort of just unraveled. No more quiet. No more pretense. Back to business as usual. Respect and responsibility lessons doled out the way they were before. 

Billy had actually begun to wonder, for a second there, if the reason that Neil was letting up was that Billy was getting better. That he had adjusted, done the work, fixed himself. That maybe some things weren’t so immutable, after all. 

It was a stupid thought, and Billy was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t let himself think like that again.

Max heard it. The walls weren’t that thick. After a while, she started turning music on in her room when the shouting would start. That way, she wouldn’t have to hear it. Billy hated her for that, too. When he had been a kid and it had been his mom with the hands on her neck, Billy at least had the decency to stay in the room. To watch, to learn. He was weak in a lot of ways, but at least he hadn’t left his mom alone out there.

Max didn’t have to hear, and Max didn’t get the lessons, and Max went about with her rebellious, angry little pre-teen existence. Angry at some far, distant injustice of the world. She would fume after watching riots on the news. “It isn’t right!” she’d say. And Billy would sit there and hate her, because her anger was so abstract and yet so loud, and his was personal, real, right there in the cigarette burns up his arm, and he couldn’t say a thing about it.

Not at home, anyways. When he moved up to high school at the school by Susan’s house, Billy decided he would become notorious. It was a conscious decision, and it was a challenge. School itself wasn’t a challenge. They gave him Silas Marner and The Scarlet Letter and Billy had to pretend like he didn’t finish the work in half the time it took everyone else. He joined the basketball team; he was tall, then. His body had become something very integral. In shirts and skins, he almost always volunteered to play skins. He liked the way it made people look at him. Like he was worth something. The only days he didn’t were the ones with purpling, the ones where he knew that if he showed himself, the world would understand the break, the breaking, the brokenness.

Billy wasn’t stupid, and he had learned from the best how to command respect. So he garnered– not friends, exactly. Followers? Not the nice kids, the rich kids with daddies in L.A., the ones who paid Billy’s friends to take tests for them. But even those ones knew him. Were scared of him, even just in a physical sense, although they still often did that thing his dad did where they talked loudly about him for his benefit. 

He could deal with them. When they tried to raise a hand to him, he was big enough and strong enough and brave enough to hit them right back. Neil bristled slightly when Billy came home with bruises, but Billy didn’t think it was about the fighting itself. In fact, he got the sense that Neil thought more highly of Billy fighting than of Billy getting good grades. It was more that these bruises were Billy’s own. Neil didn’t own his skin anymore.

Sometimes, when Neil would snap and leave a mark, Billy would go pick a fight the next day. With anyone, really, for no good reason at all. He got very good at knowing exactly what to say to make someone hit him. And then the fight. And the bruises. And the winning. When Billy could lick his teeth and taste blood, he knew it had been a good day. 

The purpose was twofold. Firstly, no one asked questions when Billy walked around with a black eye. Because Billy was notorious. But then, it was also because, for the first time in his life, Billy had something he could win.

So, no. Not many friends. But everybody sure knew him. And who needs friends anyways, Billy thought, in this world? It was the other worlds, the ones with knights and magic and verse and the sweet melody of words on words on words– it was those worlds that counted. That couldn’t let you down. So Billy fought, and he read, and when Max asked to borrow a book he never let her. Because other than his dad, those books were the only things in the world that were constant.

Sid was not a friend, per say. Sid was certainly not a constant. But, for a time, Sid was… there. He moved to California from New York, and he had ways about him, new ways, strange ways. The first day he came to school, Billy tried to pick a fight with him, and Sid just laughed it off. 

“Are you stupid?” Billy had growled into his ear, hands on his chest, Sid against a locker. Small crowd around. 

A lopsided grin. Sid’s teeth were all crooked. Billy found it strangely endearing, and thought of his first grade classmates:  _ is this one supposed to be ugly?  _ Sid defied any frame of reference. “I’m not known for being particularly smart, no.” 

Billy narrowed his eyes. Trying to parse him, analyze him, get the CliffsNotes. “You think you’re hot shit?”

“No, not really,” Sid said, “but your hands are getting pretty toasty there on my chest, buddy.” 

Billy looked down, let go, looked back up. Sid was smiling. Easy. Non-confrontational. And then, just like that, they were fine.

For his sixteenth birthday, Billy bought himself a slightly beat-up 1979 Chevrolet Camaro, with all the pennies he’d been saving up for the past two years. He fixed it up himself, washed it weekly, never let Max in with anything spillable. When Sid saw it, he laughed, and pointed to the license plate hanging way over on the left side, like someone had tacked it on as an afterthought.

“Hey. You’re not allowed to laugh at the car,” Billy said.

“Shut me up, why don’t you?” Sid raised an eyebrow.

They drove out together to a hill that overlooked the city. It was beautiful at night, and Billy wanted Sid to see it, to understand. He parked on the grass, and they were alone, and Sid got out of the car first. Walked around to lean back on the hood and stare out. Billy didn’t let anyone sit on that car, but there, that night, with Sid, they sat, shoulder to shoulder, in a vast and twinkling silence. 

“Alright,” Sid finally said.

Billy looked over to him. “What?”

“I’m not laughing.” Sid smiled back at him. “I get it. I get the car.”

“Oh, you think you get it?” But Billy was smiling too. He was looking at Sid’s profile. Sid had an aquiline nose, like Caesar. Dark eyebrows. One bit of hair poking up when it should be poking down. Billy wanted so badly to reach out and fix it.

“I do. Back in New York, we didn’t have a car. Didn’t need a car. We all just used the subway. Mom could take it right downtown to her job. I could take it to school. Way cheap.” 

“Way cheap,” Billy echoed, thinking about Caesar, about portents, about knives.

“But here, you don’t have all that. If you want to get around, I mean really get around, you need this thing.” Sid patted the blue of the Camaro. “It’s not a car. It’s freedom.”

Billy thought about knives, about hair, about dying. 

“Billy?” 

Billy blinked. Sid was looking at him funny, head cocked to the side. “Oh,” Billy said. “Right. But, I mean, it’s also a car. A really cool car.”

“Yeah,” Sid laughed. “Yeah. You know, you care entirely too much what people think of you.”

“Is that right?” 

“You want everyone to know how cool you are all the time.”

I’m not cool, Billy thought. I’m ugly. He looked at Sid and wanted to throw up, wanted to scream. There was something wrong with him. “You think I’m cool?”

“No, Billy.” Sid was very quiet. Billy had never felt so still, so jack-hammer anxious. Sid looked out over the city, the brilliant lights of the city, and sighed. “I think if you were really as cool as you pretend you are, you wouldn’t have been staring at me all night.”

Billy came unstuck from his position on the hood. He popped off, quick as his reflexes had ever been, to do– what? Hit him? Run away? Jump off the hill, tumble down into the city?

Sid caught Billy by the wrist, and all at once Billy couldn’t breathe. It was caught there, somewhere between his chest and his throat, and all he could feel was the tightness around the wrist, and thought of breaking, breaking, broken things–

“Billy.” Sid’s voice cut through.

Billy blinked at him. Stuck.

“Don’t leave because you’re scared,” Sid said. “Leave because you want to leave. If you want to leave. But don’t leave unless you mean it.” He let go of Billy’s wrist and looked up at him, all easy eyes, like this was the simplest thing in the world. 

And then, just like that, they were in it. Warmth, a strangled breathlessness, and it felt nothing and everything like fighting. Billy’s skin was not his own in a different way than it had ever been before. It wasn’t a bad thing.

“I thought you’d been with girls,” Sid breathed onto Billy’s neck, and Billy shook his head. 

“I don’t– I don’t know–”

“It’s okay,” Sid said, and it was. 

After that, it was like Neil could tell that Billy had a secret. Maybe he always acted that way and this time was just the first that Billy really felt guilty. Maybe he could just tell that Billy was happy, in a furtive, far-off way that he couldn’t touch. He slammed Billy’s head back against the kitchen cabinets until the wood splintered and Billy grinned in his father’s face. Max was there for that one. When Billy started laughing, laughing with the blood coming from his lips, she looked at him like he was the terrifying one. 

The first time Neil brought up moving, it was as a kind of warning. Billy thought it was a joke, but he should have known better. Neil said, “If you can’t get a handle on yourself, we’ll just have to leave town.” He had been playing it up a lot lately, talking about how Billy was acting crazy. Billy wasn’t sure quite when that became the narrative. Billy didn’t think he’d been any crazier than usual, not around them.

He had more energy, sure. He turned his music up loud. He seemed to have grasped something that he should have figured out a long time ago, if he was so smart, which was that Neil was going to blame him for things whether he actually did them, or not. It wasn’t about that. It was about power and control. It was about getting out the burning, awful thing inside. Billy knew because he did that, too. So Billy stopped learning so much from the lessons. He already knew the rules. He was allowed to break them sometimes. Talk back. He took a page from Max’s playbook.

And then came the worst thing. The night that afterwards was just darkness, flashes of red, of panic, waves of nausea. Him getting reckless, stealing away at night in the Camaro, the hill with Sid, the leather seats that smelled of sweat and care. Sid looking in his eyes, Billy knowing what he was going to say before he said it, Sid’s lips moving, “I love–” 

And the minutes after. Blinding headlights. The scrambling. The sheer, utter panic. Footsteps crunching against grass, heavy boots, and a tearing away. Neil’s boot on Sid’s chest, Sid in the dirt now, Billy tearing into his dad’s arm with claws like some frenzied animal. Neil turning on Billy, and Billy had never felt so scared, not since he was a little kid, not since he’d learned– not since the night he’d gotten his mom’s note, reckoned with what that meant, the aloneness, realized that she must have seen that ugly thing in him, after all. That all the times she’d called him beautiful were out of a wretched pity, but that she must have known the whole time. And that’s why she left, left him alone with his dad, because she couldn’t stand to love something so ugly anymore. 

Neil curled fingers around Billy’s throat and held him out, out over the hell, above a tumbling slope. Sid was on the ground. Billy tried to rasp out that he was sorry– not to his dad, but to Sid, to what he thought might have been something like a grail– but Sid didn’t look at him. Sid got up and stumbled away. Billy didn’t know how Sid got home that night.

He never got to find out, because the next morning Neil told everyone that they were moving to Hawkins, Indiana. He didn’t find out until a few weeks later that it had been Max who had woken up in the night to get herself a glass of water, seen Billy’s car gone and found his room empty. She said that she had been scared, later, when she tried to explain it, to justify. She said she thought he could be in danger. Max had told Susan, Susan had told Neil, Neil had brought the danger. 

So Billy hated Max. And Billy was alone. And California receded from his rear-view mirror. It was bright, and sunny, and with the windows down it smelled of sea salt. Billy was pretty sure it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever be that close to.


	2. On Crowns and Floating

Steve closed his eyes, like that would make him think better. “And the, uh, the Romans– the, Justin, Justin something, he said, we should go to war against these Ostrogoths, because– and this was in the, uh, the four hundreds? Five hundreds? Anyways, Justin’s like, we want this land back, because it used to be, you know, Rome area, and now you’re taking it, but the Ostrogoths are all nah, man. This is our place now. And we hate you, because you’re– because we’re goth and we hate everything– so anyways they fight for a super long time, like twenty years, and a ton of people in Italy die, yeah.”

Steve blinked one eye open and squinted at his father. He thought he’d done pretty well. 

Steve’s dad was not smiling. 

“Did I, uh, I got the date wrong, didn’t I? I can never remember five hundreds or four hundreds. Four hundreds?” Steve had never been particularly good at shutting his mouth, and the way his dad was pinching the bridge of his nose was making Steve nervous. 

“First of all.” Everything his dad said was accompanied by a sigh. Always sighing. Steve wondered how his dad possibly retained enough oxygen to function when he was always sighing like that. And then Steve realized that that had been actually a pretty smart thought, and that he should say that, but then his dad was already halfway through a sentence about someone called “Justinian”.

Oh. Justinian.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Steve cut over his dad. “Justinian. I knew that. I was being funny.”

“Were you?” 

“Ouch. Ouch, dad.” Steve frowned. “I’m actually– I’m wounded. You got me. Right here. Hurts bad.”

“This is a waste of my time, Stephen.” His dad stood up and made like he was going to leave the room. 

“Wait, wait, wait!” Steve caught his dad’s wrist and pulled him back towards the seat. They were perched on bar stools on opposite sides of the kitchen island, Steve’s homework between them. “Look, it was your idea to put me in the honors history class. I don’t know shit about history. I’m bad at memorizing dates. And names. Just– just give me a memonic or something.”

His dad furrowed his brow. He always did that when he thought Steve was being an idiot. “A pneumonic?”

“Yes! Perfect.” Steve tore a sheet of paper from his spiral notebook and poised his pencil over the first line. “Give me one of those.”

“There’s no cheat sheet to memorize all of this.” His dad waved his hands over the papers. “And, frankly, if you can’t remember ‘Justinian’, you aren’t going to remember any of the rest of it.”

“What, so I just fail?” Steve put the pencil down. “Jeez, dad. Stellar pep talk. So glad I asked you for help.”

“You’re not going to fail.”

“Okay, yes, great, I don’t want to,” Steve said. “So tell me what to do. Because this? This?” He picked up a sheet of homework, red marks littered across the lines, and waved it around. “Is not working.”

“Maybe you should try paying a modicum of attention in class.” His dad’s eyes had turned from peeved to angry somewhere in this conversation, and Steve had missed it. “Instead of slacking off and smoking marijuana with your friends–”

“That was– I do not– oh, come on, Dad–”

“You know, my father came from nothing.”

Steve slumped on the barstool. Somehow, it had turned into this. Again. Which is why he didn’t ask his dad for help on things, on the rare occasion that the ever-in-demand Mr. Harrington was actually in the same house as his son. 

“He was a door to door salesman,” Steve’s dad continued, with all the drama of an aging actor reciting that legendary monologue one last time. “He had nothing but a briefcase and the shoes on his feet, and when his shoes wore out he barely had the money to pay for new ones. And you know what he did?”

Using his feet against the metal, Steve pushed himself around in little squeaky circles on the barstool.

“He built himself up. He went door to door and he sold those bars of soap and he walked his feet down to the bone to make enough money for a family. And through the darkest years of the Great Depression, my father put the work in, and he bought a little plot of land right here in Indiana and he made himself a home. And kept working, Stephen, taking whatever jobs he could find, right up until the day he died. Arthur Harrington took his last breath at age sixty eight, a dedicated member of the American workforce. And you want to know why?”

“I don’t know, Dad. He just really loved soap?”

“Because he had a dream that his son would have a better life than him. A bigger life, with all the options that he never had. He worked to send me to college, to build this life for us. And now you have every opportunity in the world, and what do you do with it?”

Steve gritted his teeth. His head had begun to hurt. “I’ll just do a study group with Tommy and Carol. It’s fine.”

His dad made a small, discontented noise. Steve knew his dad’s opinions on Tommy and Carol were conflicted. They weren’t particularly good students; Carol was always getting on her teacher’s cases about something or another just to make Tommy laugh. But then, there wasn’t really anyone more deserving, in his dad’s eyes, for Steve to hang around with. The Harringtons knew their families, they were the Right sorts of people, with a capital R. Meaning Carol’s dad was a doctor and Tommy’s grandparents from Alabama were apparently pretty rich.

The truth was, Steve hadn’t been friends with Tommy and Carol since last November. The November he didn’t talk about, didn’t think about, if he could possibly help it. They saw each other in the halls, in the cafeteria, and sometimes he could hear Tommy laughing over some snide comment just after he passed. Steve felt very tired of all of it.

He’d thought, somehow, cutting ties with them would end it. The mind games, the power grabs. The stupid nickname. Some people still called him King Steve. The old Steve would’ve been happy. Or, if not, he would’ve pushed a finger up to their chests and shoot them that dark, don’t-fuck-with-me look, and they would’ve shut up and done what he said. Not like Steve would ever actually hurt them. Not in that way. 

But, once upon a time, becoming a name on King Steve’s shit list had meant something real. It meant you sit with the losers at lunch. Or with nobody at all. It meant that others, people like Tommy and Carol, people who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty, would jostle you in the hall. It meant jokes about your house, your car, your shoes. Jokes that hit where it hurt and walked around with you afterwards. 

Steve knew this, had known at the time, that this was how it worked. But it just sort of seemed like the thing. This, what he was trying to do now, this voluntary dethroning? Relinquishing the crown? Had seemed unimaginable.

But then Barb Holland had gotten drunk and drowned in Steve’s pool. She shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t have been drinking. Everybody knew that wasn’t Barb Holland’s scene. But she wanted to impress Nancy, and Nancy wanted to impress Steve, and Steve hadn’t really even noticed, at the time, that Barb was there. He might have seen her. In the months since, Steve replayed the night in his head until it made him nauseous. He still can’t remember if he’d seen her, talked to her. Done anything to help. 

And then Nancy and him had gotten all messed up. And god, how he’d hated Jonathan. The kid was creepy, and fidgety, and exactly the wrong sort of person. And Nancy liked him anyways. Really liked him. Thought he was smart, and cool, and– and artistic, or something. 

Steve wondered what it must have been about him that was so unappealing that Nancy would rather be with Jonathan than with him.

They’d broken up sometime in January, after this awful month of stupid arguments and off-again-on-again affection. It had really just become clear that Nancy didn’t even like kissing him anymore.

“Where are you?” Steve had murmured, drawing back from her.

“I’m… nowhere.” Nancy shook her head and forced a smile. They were sitting on her bed. Steve liked to crawl in through the window. He thought she liked it, too. It made him seem like a prince, like she was Rapunzel or Aurora and he was climbing up to her. He thought it was romantic. “It’s fine,” Nancy said.

Steve frowned. “I don’t want you to be nowhere. I want you to be here.”

“Well, sorry that I’m thinking about things.” Nancy drew away, and did that thing she did where she folded in on herself, arms going over her chest, brows knitting up. 

“I’m not against you thinking things, Nance.” Steve wanted to reach out and touch her. He didn’t. “But do you have to think about other things, like, right now? While we’re– you know? I sort of think you should be thinking about this.”

“God, Steve.” Nancy sighed. Everyone was always sighing at Steve. Like he was a bother. Like there was something obvious that he wasn’t understanding. Sometimes Steve wished more than anything that they would explain it to him. Sometimes it scared him so bad he never wanted to know. 

“I don’t– I’m not wrong! I’m not wrong on this one, am I?” He gestured around, kind of wildly. “What, what, what were you thinking about?”

Nancy looked so uncomfortable, and Steve hated that he was doing this, doing this to her, the one person who he really cared about, who he thought was so fucking smart and beautiful and worth it. She opened her mouth, closed it again. A sort of nervous energy in her eyes. “Jonathan said that tomorrow he’d help me do a photoshoot–”

“Jesus Christ–”

“–for the student newspaper, you know I’ve been trying to get on the staff for forever–”

“–should have known it was Jonathan, of course it was Jonathan, how stupid am I?”

“Really, Steve.” Nancy narrowed her eyes at him. “If you do this again…”

“What? Do what again?” Steve was on his feet now, off her bed, trying to get a grip and feeling it slip away from him. “Wise up? This is just like November, you and Jonathan, you and Jonathan, you and Jonathan going off and having adventures–”

“His brother got kidnapped!” Nancy was on her feet now, too, shouting. Her parents would hear. Steve didn’t care. 

“And where was I? Where was I?” Steve shot back. “Sitting at home like an asshole, waiting for you to call me! You didn’t call me, Nance! You didn’t tell me anything!”

“I am allowed to have my own life, Steve, god!” Nancy pushed a hand into her hair, tearing at it. She still looked beautiful. Steve felt crazy, and Nancy looked beautiful, even screaming at him. “I’m allowed to go do things with my best friend.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Steve said.

They both got quiet, then. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” Nancy began, tremblingly, “that you lost Tommy and Carol.”

“I’m not,” Steve said. “They were assholes.”

“Okay.” Nancy bit her lip. “I’m not really sorry, either. But I lost Barb. I lost Barb, Steve. Don’t pretend like I don’t know what it’s like. But I cannot be your everything. I’m not your best friend, I’m your only friend, and I can’t– I can’t deal with that, I can’t. I can’t be like this, afraid that every time I talk about Jonathan, about my friend, that you’re going to go crazy– and I’m not wrong, am I? I have to be allowed to think about other things.”

Steve swallowed, and he fell down into himself, could see it happening over and over and over. “If you spent even half the amount of time thinking about me that I spend thinking about you…”

He waited. He waited for Nancy to say something. Something like, “I love you.” Like, “I do, Steve, I think about you. I want you. I want you to stay.” Like, “You know I’m right about this. You know you don’t have to worry. It’s you. It’s always been you.”

Nancy said, “You could be friends with Jonathan too, if you tried.” 

Steve left through the window. He didn’t look back. He got in his BMW and he drove home and he didn’t cry. 

Two months later, Nancy and Jonathan were holding hands in the halls. Steve didn’t really blame them. She’d loved Jonathan since November, really. Steve had known that. He’d been willing to suffer that. If she could just love Steve a little bit, too, just a little bit, he would’ve taken it.

Now it was mid-March, and the guy who was once King Steve ate lunch on the stairs sometimes. When they passed each other, Jonathan smiled at him, softly, not unkindly. Steve thought of what Nancy said, and kept his eyes trained on the floor. 

Steve’s dad stood up. Steve blinked himself back into the here and now, to Ostrogoths and the Harrington family name. 

“I have to pack,” his dad said. 

“Chicago?”

“London.”

“Oh, wow.” Steve scratched absently at the back of his neck. “You uh, you know when mom’s coming back?”

“How long has she been gone?” his dad asked, like it was nothing, like it was normal. It was.

“I think since Tuesday? Said the company needed her in Milwaukee,” Steve said.

“I thought she was in Houston,” his dad said, already turning to leave.

“Oh. Maybe. I don’t know.” Steve gave a scratchy laugh. “Okay, yeah, cool. I’ll just… ask Tommy for help.” 

His dad was already gone. 

“Awesome,” Steve muttered. He dropped the pencil. It was pointless. He knew enough to get a C, C–, maybe. That was a passing grade. That was all that mattered. It was his junior year, if things went bad he could just make it up next semester. College seemed like something far-off and hard to grasp. uglAnd, as a last resort, Steve could always get work at his dad’s company. 

It was fine. It wasn’t fine, really, but things had just sort of spiraled starting in November, spiraled wonderfully past anything Steve thought could happen. And here he was now, friendless, crownless, just barely hanging onto a passing grade, completely unable to go within ten feet of his pool. Every time he tried– and he had tried– he just saw Barb floating in the water.

A lot of the time, Steve felt like he was floating, too. 

The last thing he can remember being really passionate about was Nancy. He liked math okay– it was better than history and english and all that stuff, anyways. There were clear answers. You were either right or you were wrong. Steve usually found himself lacking when interpretation played heavily into things. He always seemed to interpret things wrong. 

He’d tried violin, when he was little. As soon as he hit eight years old and it became his decision whether to continue or not, he quit. It hurt his fingers and his wrists all the time and he wasn’t very good at it. Then there’d been the fourth grade school play. They’d done Grease, and he was the Teen Angel, and only because he'd dressed the part for auditions. He mumbled his way through his big song and couldn’t remember half of his lines. Memorization really wasn’t his thing. He was okay at basketball, and he liked it, but he wasn’t anywhere near good enough to get a scholarship based on it.

But Nancy, Nancy… Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d cared so much about something. Dorky little Nancy Wheeler, who was in Econ with him and wrote with such perfect, neat handwriting. She’d gotten so pretty over the summer between sophomore and junior years. Not that she wasn’t pretty before, she’d always had those delicate little features, but now she had this– not confidence, exactly, but it was like she had learned how to take up space. 

She certainly took up space in Steve’s brain. He thought about her constantly. He bought her flowers. He knew his reputation: grab a girl for a date or a hookup, mostly never talk to her again after that. It wasn’t on purpose, although it didn’t hurt the whole King Steve image. Mostly, he just didn’t think any of those girls were very interesting. But Nancy was.

Nancy was probably the most interesting girl he’d ever met in his life. She wanted to solve mysteries when she grew up, to be a detective or a reporter. He called her Nancy Drew and it made her smile. She was tentative at first, probably warned off by her friends, but Steve had to make sure she knew he was for real. So there were flowers, and there were mixtapes, and there were pretty little trinkets that he saved up his money and bought her. 

If Nancy Wheeler was a class, he’d have aced it.

And then came November, and all the rest. He had two months of happiness with her, really. From the time school started at the beginning of his junior year, her sophomore, until Barb in the pool. Until Jonathan and the camera and the spray paint on the billboard– it had been Carol’s idea and Steve had said sure, had said yeah, yeah, let’s do it. That wasn’t an excuse.

Most of the time, when Steve saw Jonathan, he had to look away quickly. It wasn’t that he was really angry. Nancy looked happy, and while that broke his heart ridiculously, it wasn’t really Jonathan’s fault. 

Steve thought, maybe, he was scared. He could still remember that feeling, back in the alleyway. Feeling absolutely fucking useless, like he’d lost grip of the one thing he was ever any good at. 

He’d pushed Jonathan in the back, lightly. And Jonathan had wanted to walk away, had tried, but Steve kept on pushing, looking for something. He remembered saying something mean, something that he’d heard his mom say about the Byers, trying to hit him where it hurts. Maybe wanting to win. Maybe wanting to lose, to prove that he was as useless as he felt that day. As stupid.

Whatever he was looking for, he found it.

Now, Jonathan would smile at him in the hall, each time a little olive branch, and Steve would remember being on the ground, Jonathan over him, hitting him and hitting him even after he wasn’t fighting back anymore, until the cops pulled him off. 

It had been hard to tell, what with the punching and the pain and his ears ringing and the taste of blood in his mouth, but Steve was pretty sure that Nancy had been calling out. He didn’t begrudge her not getting physically involved. It had been scary, had been wild animals at each other’s throats. The thing that still stung was that he was fairly certain Nancy had been calling out Jonathan’s name. 

Steve wasn’t sure what he was scared of, now. He could maybe take Jonathan in a fight if the kid wanted a rematch. He’d be prepared. Maybe, maybe not. But Jonathan clearly wasn’t looking for a fight anymore. Whatever all that anger, all that feral tearing inside him was, it had dissipated as soon as Will came home. Now, Jonathan just smiled.

Maybe Steve was scared of knowing Jonathan. Maybe he didn’t want to know Nancy’s better alternative. Because he’d have to realize she was right. If Steve stood back to back with Jonathan, all the ways that Steve came up short would be abundantly clear.

So Steve kept his distance– from Jonathan, from Nancy, from Tommy and Carol. From everyone, mostly. 

He puttered around his house alone, his big beautiful house that was almost always empty. He rented movies and watched them on his big beautiful TV. He ordered pizzas and ate the entire thing himself. His parents bought him an Atari and he played well into the night. He put Peter Gabriel on the record player and danced in a robe in the darkness and solitude of his living room. 

He sat, drunk and alone, on the ground, head pressed against the big beautiful window, and stared out at his swimming pool.

The night that Steve’s dad left for London, he told Steve that he’d bring him back a little figurine of a double-decker bus. Steve smiled, and said he’d put it with the others. 

He had a shelf, in his room. A little Statue of Liberty, a mini version of Wrigley Field, a little bobble headed dude with a sombrero. The shelf was crowded with mementos of all the places his parents spent their time.

Steve drove over to Family Video and rented Valley Girl and brought it home. He made himself popcorn the way he liked it, too much butter and too much salt. He sat on the floor in front of his couch, curled up in a blanket, turned the movie on, and cried and cried. 

He rose with the sun the next morning. It was a Monday, and the sunlight peeked out bright behind the slopes of trees in his backyard, glinted off the surface of the pool. Distantly, from upstairs, his alarm clock chirped, unheeded.

Steve startled awake. He had been dreaming. In the dream, there was a stag in the forest, haunches speckled with little white dots, antlers fuzzy and soft. Steve wanted so badly to touch it. He moved forwards, gently, picking his way through the underbrush, careful to avoid the twigs and fallen leaves that littered the ground. He didn’t want to scare the creature away.

He would look down, place his foot just right, and then look back up. But every time he looked up, the deer was just as far away as it had always been. And he couldn’t stop the process. The need to approach, the looking down, the care, the looking up, the disappointment. 

When Steve gasped his way into sharp, sun-flooded reality, there were tears pricking at his eyes. A few moments passed, and he couldn’t remember what he was dreaming about. 

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep here, awkwardly propped against the couch, stray pieces of popcorn in the crook of his elbow. He’d slept too late, too long, and he had to get to school.

A little nagging voice in the back of his mind: do you? Do you have to? Would anybody miss you if you didn’t show? 

He pushed that down and staggered to his feet, groping his way upstairs to his bedroom and leaving the remnants of his night strewn around downstairs. As long as he cleaned it up before one of his parents got home, it didn’t matter.

He slammed his hand down on the alarm clock to stop its bleating, then glanced in the mirror briefly. It was a mistake. “Jesus,” he groaned, running a hand through his hair. It was still full of yesterday’s spray, all of Farrah Fawcett’s favorite vitamins and minerals conspiring to push his hair now into an atrocious state. 

He tamped it down as best he could, swapping yesterday’s outfit for today’s. Falling asleep in your clothes made for less laundry. Hell of a silver lining.

Books and papers went into his backpack, Nikes were pulled onto one foot at a time as he hopped. Steve stole a glance at the fridge, decided against wasting the time. He grabbed an apple from the counter’s fruit bowl and pushed his way outside, snatching the keys to the Beemer as he went. 

He managed to get to the high school just in time. His progress was impeded somewhat by someone’s intrusion into his parking spot. His grip tightened around the steering wheel. Sure, he wasn’t King anymore, but until now nobody had gone so far as to take his spot. He’d parked there every day since the start of junior year. 

But, no. It was fine. If some jerk with an old Camaro wanted to take that, too, it was fine. Because Steve was just a regular guy now. He was morally above getting mad about something like that. He found another spot and dashed his way into the halls.

There was something different in the air. It hit him as soon as he got to his locker and got his bearings. The air had shifted. Like the heaviness that hangs in the moments preceding a storm of epic proportions, the air of Hawkins High throbbed. It was as if everyone, the girls across the hallway at their lockers, the boys shouldering by– even Tommy and Carol, Tommy and Carol down the way hanging over each other– were all holding their breath. 

Steve didn’t get why until he saw him.

Tall, tan, with a white shirt and too-tight blue jeans, a pack of cigarettes conspicuous in the front pocket of his denim jacket, a little gold necklace bouncing on his chest with each step– there was a boy walking down the hall. His hair was long and curled and perfect, but in a different way than Steve’s. Like it was natural. Like he totally didn’t care.

This was not a boy that belonged at Hawkins High, in Hawkins at all. That much was abundantly clear. But here he was, striding down the center of the hall with swagger in his step. He didn’t stop for people; they moved around him. 

Steve’s mouth felt dry. He thought– there’s something wrong. Something must be wrong. Is anybody going to tell him he’s got the wrong place? That boys that looked like him weren’t supposed to exist in this hallway?

But nobody did. 

Steve learned his name, heard it whispered a million times throughout the day. The students pronounced it with a certain awe: Steve couldn’t tell if it was reverence or fear. Maybe there wasn’t a difference. Steve rolled the name around on his tongue. It was easy enough. Nothing special about it. 

Nobody was sure where he came from. New York City, L.A., somewhere glamorous. The general, obvious consensus was: not here. He had just showed up, middle of the week. He was a model. He was an actor. He had a little sister in the middle school. He got kicked out of his old school for burning the gym down. He was on the run from the law.

There were a lot of theories. Steve tried to pretend like he didn’t care, but that was a lie. The only thing that everyone could agree on was that this school had become Billy Hargrove’s school, with all the swiftness of a guillotine.


	3. Notorious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys so much for your comments, they give me life :0 !! also who's excited for them to finally meet

It became swiftly evident that Hawkins High was going to be an easy place to achieve notoriety.

Billy dropped Max off at the middle school, then headed to the adjacent building, pulling the Camaro into a convenient spot. He and Max weren’t talking, per say. He would tell her to get in the car, she would tell him to slow down, he would drive faster. Not real talking. Not that they had ever been great, but the issue was that, in the past week and a half, Max had graduated from entitled kid and royal pain in the ass to an actual danger. 

He didn’t think she knew what had happened. Well, the bruises on his throat were a tip off. They’d faded by now, in the time it had taken them to move in and enroll in school and whatnot. But the morning after that night, the morning that they’d left their home, Billy could have narrated a play-by-play with all the marks across his body.

But Sid, and the car, and the dark, guilty moon looking on– Neil would never tell anyone about that. Despite what he would say over angry dinners, Billy was his son. And that meant that Billy’s shame was his shame. So Max would never know the worst parts. Billy certainly didn’t plan on telling her. 

As far as Billy was concerned, that night never happened. Sid never existed. Since Sid was never able to finish saying those words, those words that would have changed everything, it was easier to pretend it was all just some dream, some golden fantasy like in the novels he read. Something fleeting, ephemeral, translucent. If Billy tried hard, he could see right through it, like it was hardly there.

In Hawkins, things would be different. That was his dad’s intention, he was sure. And loath though he was to acquiesce to any of his father’s desires, Billy knew it was for the best. He would be notorious here, and that was all. He would be respected. 

What else was there to try to be in this bumfuck town?

It wasn’t going to be a great challenge. He realized this the second he walked down the hall of the high school, and people parted ways for him like his name was Moses. 

Rumors spread, and he let them. Most of them were complimentary, and the ones that weren’t still made him sound important. It was a little mind-bending, to see an entire mythology be born and propagated before lunch. Fortunately, none of the speculations touched near to the truth. Billy knew he had to keep it that way. Make himself so untouchable that no one would dig too deep. 

He stepped out to smoke during lunch. It was a power move, really, carrying the pack around out in the open like that. He hadn’t been sure if he should try it, but he figured that getting sent to the principal’s office on the first day wouldn’t be a bad look either, for this whole personality cult that seemed to be forming. But nobody called him on it. The closest that came was in chem. 

The teacher was in her forties, but Billy could tell that, under the horn-rimmed glasses, she wasn’t half bad looking. She came up behind him in class, while everyone else was working on something that Billy didn’t know, hadn’t learned. 

“Are those really such a good idea?” Her breath was close to his ear, and he could smell the faint aftertaste of smoke on it. 

He smiled. “Maybe not, Mrs. Carrigan. But we don’t always do what we’re supposed to, do we?” He looked up at her and she was blushing a little. 

“No, I suppose we don’t.” She gave a quiet little laugh. “And it’s Ms. Carrigan.” She held up her left hand, to show him. “No ring.” 

Billy had, of course, known that.

He didn’t really like doing it. There was a sort of thrill, sure, of getting away with something. Like when he’d used to slip Jolly Ranchers in the pockets of his jean jacket and make it out of the gas station unnoticed. He used to toss a pack on Max’s bed, because he knew she liked her candy sour, and then neither of them would talk about it. 

But this thing with Mrs. Carrigan was different. There was a sort of a spider crawl on the back of his neck as she stood behind him, and something loosened in his stomach only after she’d left and returned to the front of the classroom. It was sort of like a business transaction, he supposed, a quid pro quo. He said the things he knew would make her feel pretty, and young, and rebellious, and he could get what he wanted. It didn’t hurt him.

So why did he feel sick after?

Billy walked into the cafeteria at lunch and everybody went silent. It would’ve been comical if it wasn’t so damn frustrating. This, this social climbing, this vast conquering a la Alexander, was supposed to be a little difficult. It had been in California.

The difference, he supposed, was that in California, people had been cool. And people from Hawkins were fucking stupid. 

He was itching for a fight, so he went to the parking lot for a smoke instead. He could feel eyes on him, and where he had used to like that– came in this morning specifically looking for it, even– it had begun to feel claustrophobic. He burst out to be greeted by fresh air, and it was so wonderful that he almost didn’t want to ruin it with a smoke.

Almost. He cupped his hand around the end and lit it, flames licking up from his lighter dangerously close to his palm, which he left close for a second too long. As soon as it started to really burn, he drew it away quick, shaking it, like that would help. The jolt woke up his system, and he felt a little more real again. 

And then, of course, someone had to come and ruin it. He was leaning against the side of the building when the door opened, and he cast his eyes away. Not so far that he couldn’t see the intruder, but just enough to seem uninterested.

“You’re Billy Hargrove.”

It wasn’t a question, of course. Billy let his head loll to the side and appraised the boy. He was round-cheeked and grotesquely freckled. His hair was short but fluffed up all over, and he had a polo on. Rich, obviously. Thought he was somebody. 

“I’m Billy Hargrove,” Billy said, and they were the first words he’d spoken to a member of the student body of Hawkins High. “Am I supposed to know who you are?”

The boy seemed to kind of bristle. “I’m Tommy. I’m sort of a big deal around here.”

Billy doubted that very much. 

Tommy continued: “You got a smoke?”

Billy smirked around his cigarette. “Fresh out.” 

It was an obvious lie, and one that Tommy clearly didn’t know what to do with. “Right. Uh,” he stammered. “You should be sitting with us in there. When you come back in.”

Billy raised an eyebrow. “‘Us’?”

“Me, Carol Perkins, Nicole, Tina… you know.” Tommy puffed out his chest. “Just thought I’d make you aware of the situation. Show you the ropes. Since you’re new around here.”

Billy cocked his head to the side. God, how he hated this kid already. He took the cigarette from between his lips, flicked it to the ground. Took a step towards Tommy, real casual-like. “Funny,” he said, “I’ve heard a lot about who the people to know here are, and your name hasn’t come up at all. Instead, all I keep hearing about is…” It was a gamble, for sure. But Tommy didn’t hold himself like a leader. He held himself a sheep. Billy had years of experience in the difference. 

“Steve.” Tommy rolled his eyes. “Trust me, King Steve hasn’t been a player on this– uh, this chessboard, you know– for a while. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“King Steve.” Billy tried the name out. He laughed. This town really was low on entertainment. “And what’s this king look like?”

“Not the king anymore, no, that’s what I’m trying to–”

Billy cut Tommy off with a wave of his hand. “Paint me a word picture, Tommy.”

He saw the boy warm up, hearing his name in Billy’s mouth. This was so easy it was almost boring. “He’s, uh, he has brown hair? Really big, like this really big hair. Um, tall, like, taller than you? Sort of big eyes, got a birthmark on the side of his knee–”

Okay. So they were friends. Had been friends. Childhood friends? And something happened. A smile grew across Billy’s face. “Alright, I get it. Didn’t think I’d be getting the Sistine Chapel, here.”

Tommy frowned, trying to track the metaphor, and, before the boy could fully figure it out, Billy clapped a firm hand on his shoulder.

“You’re right, Tommy,” he said. “I should be sitting with you.” Had to put it in their words. Billy had never tried to know rich people before. Well, Indiana-rich. Indiana-rich was different than California-rich. But Billy suspected that, in a town like this, the Indiana-rich teenage royalty cared a great deal about their supposed Indiana-richness. “I can recognize class when I see it.”

That did the trick. Tommy led Billy back into the cafeteria, where he met girls whose names he tried his best to remember, and suddenly he had friends.

No. Not friends. Whatever these people were. Acolytes. Sheep. Billy trusted them about as far as he could throw them. Or– maybe, as far as Max could throw them. Billy sized Tommy up; he could probably throw him pretty far. 

That wasn’t the point. The point was, he could read Tommy like an open book. Tommy wanted to feel liked. He wanted to feel adjacent to power, but he didn’t like the actual responsibility that came with being the leader of something. Billy could see it, in the lines of his smile, in the dark of his eyes, that the second Billy stopped being useful, powerful, infallible, Tommy would drop him as quickly as he’d dropped this “King Steve”. 

So Billy had to be the sun. Radiant, beautiful, nourishing, and sort of distant. The sun didn’t show up to school with mysterious bruises. Didn’t fight with a little sister. Certainly didn’t live in a small, shitty house on Bowden St. 

Maybe this was the challenge. Before, at his old school, it had been different. A lot of them were from the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. It wasn’t the hugest thing. There was a big enough student body that he could be Bitchin’ Billy Hargrove in his own little corner and never really have to care about what the guys who drove BMWs thought about him. 

Here, there were only so many people. So Billy wasn’t poor, he was just from California. They did things differently. Wore different clothes. He could play that up. Show up to the parties at the big houses, make pretend he knew what he was doing there.

So long as he did that, he’d have not-friends. He’d have Tommy, and Tommy’s friends, and the girls staring at him from across the table and smiling. He’d have a buffer. No, Dad, he’d say, I was out with friends. And they’d be respectable friends, not friends like Sean and those boys, like Sid– definitely not like Sid. 

Billy squeezed his eyes shut, briefly. Red and black, boots, hands, not breathing– He opened his eyes again and blocked that out. 

They were all looking at him. Waiting for something. Someone must have just talked. 

Billy felt hot. He barked out a laugh, and they all seemed appeased. He’d just validated someone’s joke, he guessed. 

But there was just one thing. One thing he spent the whole day looking for: King Steve. He pieced it together throughout the day, from stray comments, from jokes. People seemed to think they could talk to him now, and boy, did they talk. Billy mostly just listened.

This was what he gathered: since basically the beginning of time, Steve Harrington had been the King. He was rich, he was well-liked, he hosted the best parties. He had the best hair. And then he had fallen hard for this goody-goody nerd chick Nancy, and then Nancy’s best friend had drowned in Steve’s heated pool. Steve flipped out on his friends, made himself into a social pariah, and his dork girlfriend dumped him for some creep photographer. 

Billy wasn’t really sure what to expect. There was something strange in the way people talked about him, this undercurrent of “isn’t it a damn shame?” Good or bad, everybody had an opinion about Steve “The Hair” Harrington. 

Billy so wanted to see that famous hair. 

He kept an eye out all day, to no avail. King Steve was nowhere to be found. It was only in his last period, an english composition class he shared with Carol, Tommy’s girlfriend and resident bubblegum-blowing gossip, that he found a pertinent clue. 

Apparently, Billy had parked in Steve’s spot. He hadn’t really realized there were spots, even unofficially, but now he was glad it had worked out this way. Because now he knew that Steve drove a blue BMW– which, of course he did– and there happened to be only one blue BMW in the Hawkins High parking lot after school that day.

Billy made a beeline towards it. He had a kind of a sort of a plan. Size up the old King, show him up in public, decisively supplant him. The King is dead, long live the King. Etcetera. 

He leaned back against the hood of the Beemer, arms crossed. Max would be waiting for a ride home. His dad would get on his case if he didn’t bring her home on time. Well. Just as long as he knew what was coming, it was easier to brace for it. And Max could wait. She owed him that much. 

He thought about lighting a cigarette. Cool? Too much? He uncrossed his arms. People were starting to come out. This was stupid. He could just leave. It had been a long day already. If he got home on time, maybe he could just get a decent night’s rest for once. Look over all the materials the teachers had given him to help him catch up. It wasn’t too late to leave, to play at being a real boy.

Someone was walking toward him. Someone with the tallest head of hair Billy had ever seen.

“Hey, man,” said the boy who must be King Steve. Billy wondered how a crown could ever have perched atop such a ridiculous coiffure. 

Except, then, Billy looked down to his face. And it was… 

“You’re sitting on my car,” Steve said, all easygoing. He cocked one eyebrow and Billy forgot everything he was going to say. 

They stood there for a while. Too long. Neil had been wrong; Billy was stupid. This was stupid. He felt like running, snapping, dying, he wanted the waves of California back, he wanted the pain that made sense.

Pain. The pain was, at least, honest. 

He pushed himself off the hood. “I’ve heard a lot about you today, Harrington, but nobody told me you were so observant.”

Steve scoffed. Billy didn’t get scoffed at very often. He couldn’t tell if he minded. “Is there something you want?” 

“Just wanted to apologize.” Billy put his hands up in mock surrender. “Apparently I parked in your spot.”

“It’s fine,” Steve started, “don’t–”

“See, I never would’ve gone and done that if I’d known.” Billy continued to advance. Steve stood his ground, and they were suddenly only feet away from each other. Billy kept his voice raised, so the small gathering crowd who were pretending not to listen could hear it. It was all about the spectacle of the thing. “A man that’s lost his crown and his girl in the same year should at least get to keep his parking spot.”

There it was. A narrowing of the eyes, a tautness, the thunder warning of a lightning clap. Billy, ever the tree, extended out his branch-arms to the oncoming storm. 

“I don’t have a problem with you.” Steve’s voice was tight. Quiet. He wasn’t playing along with the show. “Walk away.”

This wasn’t fun. It was supposed to hurt, to feel like something real, to ground Billy when he felt himself slipping away. “I don’t have a problem with you, either. Here, I thought you were supposed to be some tough guy, the way everyone talks about you. But you aren’t, are you?”

People were staring. Steve didn’t answer him. Just stood there, tight-lipped, not moving. Billy couldn’t stay still. He kept shifting on his feet, pacing a little back and forth. 

“Why would you fight me,” Billy said, leaning in, letting himself smile. Not like anything was funny. More like a shark. “When you couldn’t even fight to keep your girl?”

“You’d better watch your mouth, Hargrove,” Steve shot back. He looked serious. Billy wasn’t sure why, but this felt different. Different than Tommy, than the boys back home. There was something about Steve Harrington. “You’re talking about things that aren’t any of your business.”

“Oh, yeah?” Billy had grown quiet, too. Matching Steve. It was supposed to be a big show. When had he lost the show? When had this become real? “I didn’t know you had any business outside of your rich Daddy’s.” 

Steve’s hands shot out and pushed Billy away. Not hard, not to hurt, just to budge Billy back a few steps. It caught Billy wrong-footed, and he let the push carry him, but then he was moving right back up into Steve’s space. 

“What’s wrong, King Steve?” Billy growled. “Can’t take the heat?”

“Don’t call me that.” Steve didn’t push him again, let Billy crowd his space, but Billy could see him all wound up and taut as a guitar string ready to break. 

“It’s what they all call you,” Billy said. He looked right into Steve’s eyes, his dark brown eyes, eyes like graves. “Me, though? I don’t give anyone a name like that unless they’ve earned it. Did you earn it, King Steve? You ever earn anything in your life?” 

“Shut up,” Steve said, very softly.

“You earn your crown? Your friends? Your nice big house with the swimming pool–?”

Billy saw something in Steve snap, and then Steve was hitting him, hard, across the face. Billy had been waiting, was ready for it, had practiced planting his feet and taking it. His head snapped to the side, but he didn’t lose his footing. 

Fucking finally.

Billy swung back, catching Steve square in the jaw. Then it was really on, Steve lunging for Billy’s midsection and driving Billy back with a startling force into the BMW, Billy’s knees buckling against the metal. Billy could’ve pushed Steve off him, but he didn’t. He grabbed Steve by the collar of his polo and slammed their heads together. Then they were off the car and on the asphalt, all fists and knees, and Billy was only dimly aware of the people around, of the exceptional spectacle.

He hardly even remembered he was supposed to care about that. Because somewhere in there, with his hands balled up in Steve’s shirt, Billy almost caught a small moment of closeness.

They looked at each other, Billy under Steve on the ground, Steve’s arm lifted to hit Billy again, knuckles split and hair all haywire, and Billy thought, wildly, that he knew this boy. Do it, he thought, do it. 

Steve didn’t. He lowered his arm, and pushed Billy away. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He said.

Billy didn’t know. 

Steve started to walk away. Billy didn’t know where he was going, because Billy was still on the ground by the BMW. It washed over him all at once, the show, what he was supposed to be doing with this. Everyone was staring at him. He was out of control. Neil had been right, Billy really was going crazy. Losing it. Losing it. Lost. 

He scrambled to his feet. “Don’t you walk away!” He shouted after Steve. “Come back and fight me like a man, Harrington! Unless you’re afraid you’ll lose?” 

Steve kept walking, like Billy knew he would. Didn’t even turn around. But Billy chanced a look around at the crowd, and it had maybe sort of worked. Maybe he’d convinced them that he hadn’t lost that fight, that Steve was the big loser for walking away before it was done. 

The scary thing was, it had been done. And it was Billy’s fault. He could have kept fighting. He was stronger than Steve, much stronger, and he had experience. The only way Billy wouldn’t have won that fight was if he didn’t want to.

And that’s what Steve had seen. What he’d recoiled from in disgust, what he’d walked away from. Billy’s capitulation. Billy’s weakness. Billy had looked at Steve and, for a second, really seen him. And Steve had seen him back, seen all that rabid ugliness, and would rather walk away from it than be around it for one second longer. 

Billy didn’t think about his mother. 

He straightened his shoulders, stretching against the developing bruises, and walked to his car like he was confident, like he had won, like he had just shown the school how tough and goddamn notorious he was. He got in the Camaro, slammed the door, and peeled out of the parking lot. 

He made a right to get to the middle school, and he saw Steve. Steve wasn’t walking anymore. He had turned the corner of the building and was squatting, back against the wall, hands threaded through his hair, tugging feverishly. 

Billy wondered, not for the first time, what was so broken deep inside himself to make him like this. To make him love the fight, to make him hate it so desperately. He looked over again, driving slowly by, and Steve was maybe crying. Billy felt rotten, felt ugly, felt a dull pain across his cheek and this pain wasn’t honest, wasn’t easy, wasn’t fun.

Billy turned off towards the middle school, towards Max and home, and left Steve behind in the rearview mirror. Today had been okay. The rumor mill would do its thing, and hopefully warp that fight in Billy’s favor. He’d be okay. He’d be the new king of this shitty little corn hick town, and he’d never think about Steve Harrington.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and willed himself to stop shaking.


	4. Swimming Pool

Steve was at the bottom of his swimming pool. Everything was blue, lit up in the darkness by those little lights set into the bottom. He needed to get to the surface, but with every claw, every desperate push towards the surface, he just seemed to sink deeper. He could see his breath escaping up in bubbles towards the surface. Something had wrapped around his legs.

“Steve,” said Barb. 

“I’m so sorry,” Steve gasped, the last of his air escaping out. He tried to find more, gasping in shallow breaths that were somehow both water and not. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Steve!” 

Hands on his shoulders.

Steve opened his eyes, and looked up at Nancy.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said. She was crouching in front of him, her face filling his view. Her eyes wide and blue, her hands on his shoulders, touching him with a grounding firmness. She hadn’t touched him since January. 

Steve shook his head a little bit. “I’m– what’s–” He swallowed. Came back to himself, little by little. 

Only when he saw Jonathan standing there, a few paces back, looking all awkward and nervous with his hands shoved in his pockets, eyes fixed resolutely on the pavement– only then did Steve have the good sense to lean back, out of Nancy’s grasp. 

His back bumped against the brick wall of the side of Hawkins High. He pushed himself shakily to his feet, one of his knees throbbing from the fight. Right. The fight. 

“Where did you go?” Nancy asked gently, standing to meet him. 

Steve shook his head. It was bad enough he had done whatever he had just done, out in the open where anyone could see him. Bad enough that Nancy and Jonathan had, for some reason, followed him out here. He did not need to make this any worse by venting to his ex-girlfriend about it. 

Anyways, Nancy wouldn’t want to hear about the pool.

“I was just taking a second,” Steve said. Ran a hand through his hair, shot her a smile that hopefully looked realer than it felt. “That guy was crazy.”

From behind Nancy, Jonathan was nodding. “It was really intense,” he said.

“Is your head okay?” Nancy frowned at Steve, giving him a shrewd once-over.

Steve didn’t look at her. “It really was,” he replied to Jonathan, and then realized those were probably the first words he’d said to Jonathan in two months. 

For a moment, Jonathan looked as surprised as Steve felt, but he covered it up pretty well. “If you need to disinfect those or anything,” he said, gesturing to Steve’s split knuckles, “you can come to my place. It isn’t far.” 

Steve felt a sinking in his stomach, a vague unsettled nausea. “Uh, no. That’s fine. I got stuff at home.”

“Really, Steve,” Nancy said, in exactly the tone she always used to use with him. A little chiding, a little caring.

That care burned in his chest until he had to look away. “I’m fine, seriously.” He brushed past her, off down the sidewalk. “Thanks, but I’ll be good.”

He made it a few yards before Nancy called after him.

“Steve?”

He thought about not turning. He could just keep on walking. Pretend he hadn’t heard her. Pretend like none of this had happened, like they hadn’t just had the closest thing they’d had to a conversation since that night in her bedroom. 

But Steve was a sucker, always was and always would be, and he had to see her face. He wanted so badly to see those eyes trained on him again with their massive, supernova care.

Steve turned. “Yeah?”

“You, uh. Your car.” Nancy’s eyebrows were knit together. “Your car’s still back there, right?” It clicked, then: the worry wasn’t from care. It was from concern, from goddamn pity. It was because Steve so evidently couldn’t keep himself together without help.

“Right. Yeah, I– I knew that.” Steven spun on his heel and marched the other way, back to the parking lot, and this time he didn’t look back at Nancy or Jonathan. 

When he passed his usual spot, the Camaro was gone. There were still a few people standing around, warily regarding him as he trudged back to the Beemer. Steve didn’t indulge them with a reaction, just got in the car and drove home.

He was thinking about Nancy’s question. She’d asked him where he had gone. Steve wasn’t really sure. He remembered the before. 

Billy Hargrove had been leaning against the Beemer. Steve hadn’t wanted a fight, really hadn’t. But he hadn’t been blind to what Hargrove was trying to do. It was the exact thing he’d done to Jonathan in the alley beside the movie theater back in November. Steve didn’t know why Hargrove had wanted to push him and push him, what the boy had been looking for. Steve meant to leave him hanging, to float through the day unbothered. Steve didn’t owe Billy Hargrove anything.

But then the guy had mentioned the swimming pool– how did he know about that? Had word spread that quickly? What else did he know?– and Steve’s vision had gone red. 

He wondered if that was what it had been like for Jonathan. 

The next thing Steve had known, he was on the asphalt, Hargrove beneath him, an arm raised high in preparation of a swing. There was a horrible, horrible look in the other boy’s eyes. Like he could see right through Steve. Steve was the one straddling him, about ready to knock his teeth out, but somehow it felt like Hargrove was the one winning. Like Steve had played right into his hands. 

Steve felt dirty, and useless, and stupid. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he said to Hargrove, stumbling to his feet, and what he meant was: why did you make me do this? Did you mean for it to happen this way? Did you know that I was just one wrong push away from being the scary thing?

Steve got home to an empty house and a mess of popcorn and blankets on the living room floor. The little light on the answering machine was blinking red. He dropped his things by the door, kicked his shoes off across the carpet, and trudged to listen to the message.

It was his mother.

“Hello, Stevie,” it began.

Steve loved listening to his mother’s voice. It was smooth and low and controlled. She had been a singer, and sometimes, when plied with Manhattans, she would put on an Etta James record and sway and sing along. 

“I hope you’re well. I’m calling from New Mexico. The conference went excellently, and I made a new friend. I’ll be staying at his house a little while– when you see your father, tell him that I think this could be a very good opportunity. We could be looking at an international trade deal, if I play this right. So I’ll probably be here the next two or so weeks–”

Steve turned it off. He’d heard the rest already, every time one of his parents called with news like this. It was a whole lot of “so sorry” and “utmost importance” and “home so soon”. 

That night, Steve slept in his own bed. He dreamt of the forest again, only this time he was the one with antlers sprouting from his forehead, and there was a dark figure in the distance that never quite moved close enough to see.

The next day in school, all anyone was talking about was Billy Hargrove. Steve wiped the sleep from his eyes, a weary sleep that only proved to make him more exhausted, and thought that he was pretty fucking tired of Billy Hargrove. 

Billy Hargrove, however, did not seem to have tired of Steve. In-between first and second period, Hargrove shoulder-checked him in the halls. 

“Unnecessary,” Steve muttered. Hargrove did not respond. 

And then, in lunch, Steve was confronted by the sight of Hargrove once again sitting with Tommy and Carol. The latter two shot him gleeful looks as he stood there awkwardly with his tray. He had come to understand that the popular opinion about yesterday’s fight is that Hargrove had decisively won. Steve wasn’t sure where that had come from– they’d seen it, right?– but also wasn’t exactly in a position to dispute it. Not without a rematch, which was just about the last thing he wanted.

Nancy and Jonathan were there at their own table, and Nancy sort of cocked her head at Steve as they locked gazes. Steve was pretty sure that, if he wanted to, he could go sit with them right now and they’d all pretend like it was fine and normal.

He turned his back and left. He took his tray to the stairwell and ate his lunch with his back against the wall. 

He made it through the rest of the school day Hargroveless, something he was prepared to be very pleased about. But with the boy’s absence came a strange curiosity, a nagging obsession burgeoning in the back of Steve’s mind. What was Hargrove doing now? He’d been sporting a bruise across his cheekbone earlier– had Steve done that? He couldn’t remember. He supposed he must have. 

So Steve couldn’t tell if he was horrified or obscenely relieved to see Billy Hargrove walk into the gym during basketball practice. 

“This is our new addition to the team, Billy Hargrove,” the coach said, as if anyone didn’t know who it was. 

“I didn’t know we needed a new member,” Steve said, mostly to himself, but he could tell Hargrove had heard by the wolfish narrowing of his eyes.

They played shirts versus skins that day, and when Hargrove stripped off his muscle tank, Steve couldn’t help but stare.

Bruises, purple bruises, spread across the boy’s gut. Although Steve knew that his own chest wasn’t exactly in mint condition this morning, it didn’t look anywhere near that bad. Steve couldn’t help but look down at his hands, knuckles split from repeated, ferocious impact. He remembered words spray painted on the front of the movie theater, the last time his hands had crafted something so awful. 

The thing that scared Steve the most was how easy it had been. How close to being much worse. If he hadn’t made terrible, intense eye contact with Hargrove at that moment, would he have stopped? Steve had been going around since November bolstering himself with thoughts of having changed, but he hadn’t changed at all. 

“You just gonna stare, Harrington, or are we gonna play some ball?” Hargrove was looking right at him.

Steve coughed and looked away. “Yeah, yeah.” He would not rise to the occasion. Not this time.

Hargrove crowded him on the court. Everywhere Steve turned, there Hargrove was, breath on the back of Steve’s neck. Steve was pretty sure that Hargrove was wearing Drakkar Noir.

“Who taught you how to play, Harrington?” Hargrove murmured with a little laugh, all quiet like it was just for Steve’s benefit. “Back in Cali, you actually had to be good to get on a team. Didn’t realize that in Hawkins all it took was for Daddy to buy your way in.”

“Okay, Randy.” Steve rolled his eyes.

“Wh– Randy?”

“Valley Girl?” Steve glanced over his shoulder. “Uh, it was– Nic Cage in Valley Girl?”

“You watched Valley Girl?” 

Steve shut up after that. 

Except, then Hargrove approached him in the locker room. Steve had just finished changing and was towelling off his hair at his locker when Hargrove sidled up. 

“You know it was a show, right?” Hargrove said.

“I’m sorry?” Steve thought: leave me alone. Steve thought: make me understand you. 

“The whole thing in the parking lot yesterday. It wasn’t anything personal.”

“Sure felt like it,” Steve said. He shut his locker and looked around. They were alone in here. Hargrove had waited to catch him until everyone else had left. Steve’s heart rate kicked up and he thought about hands around his ankles and deep, deep water. 

Hargrove was shrugging. “Well, it wasn’t. It just had to happen. But I don’t see why we can’t get along now.” 

Steve snorted. “I can think of one or two reasons.”

“All I’m saying is, you don’t have to hide out in the stairwell.” Hargrove smiled with teeth like fangs. “I’m not a boogeyman coming to get you.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Steve shot back. His heart thudded. Had he decided something about not rising to the occasion? He hadn’t vowed a solemn oath or anything. “If I’d wanted to kick your ass yesterday, I would have. And we both know that.”

Hargrove walked forward, rapidly closing the distance between them. Steve felt his back bump against the locker. They were alone. Anything could happen in there, and nobody would know until it was too late. “Then what did you want, Harrington?”

Steve opened his mouth and nothing came out. He couldn’t move from his place sandwiched between Hargrove and the locker. 

“And don’t pretend,” Hargrove growled, “you know anything about me.”

For the first time, Steve wondered if Billy Hargrove was a human being.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. 

Hargrove blinked, and took a step back. 

“For the– you know.” Steve gestured vaguely towards Hargrove’s torso. 

Hargrove’s eyes were comically wide for a moment, staring, completely bewildered, at Steve, and then he began to laugh. It was a loud, awful laugh that echoed through the empty locker room. “Don’t you worry about it.”

And then Billy Hargrove turned and left, and Steve felt, once again, like he had just lost an entirely different battle than the one he’d thought he was fighting. 

That night, Steve settled on the ground in the living room and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the pool. The house had just about run out of food, and after school he hadn’t really been in the mood to go shopping. He ate a granola bar and some leftover popcorn and promised himself he would grab groceries after school tomorrow.

The woods beyonds the pool were dark, trees gently creaking and swaying. If Steve were normal, they’d be the thing he’d be scared of. 

The water of the pool was dark. Steve wanted to see it. He pushed himself to his feet and made his way to the kitchen, never taking his eyes off the water. He flipped the switch, and a blue, shimmering light lit up the water. There was steam rising off the surface. His parents liked to keep it heated all the time, even in this nipping mid-April nighttime chill. Their argument was that they never knew when Steve would want to go in it. Maybe a night-time dip.

They knew he’d hosted parties. They didn’t condone it, not out loud, but he could tell that when they did find out about one of his soirees, they felt a sort of pride at owning the party house, the place to be. Something about Steve’s soap salesman grandpa.

Steve didn’t think they knew that he hadn’t touched that pool for almost five months.

“Then what did you want, Harrington?” Hargrove had asked. Steve wished he could get it out of his head. What did he want? What was the point of just floating and floating if he couldn’t even touch his swimming pool?

Screw this. 

Steve crossed back to the living room, now striding with a purpose. He crouched in front of the cabinet that supported the TV. He knew where his parents kept the liquor. He almost never broke into it; parties had usually been BYOB, and he didn’t particularly make it a practice to drink alone. But tonight was– tonight he needed this. 

He grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s by the neck and closed the cabinet again, forgoing any of his parents’ neatly stacked crystal shot glasses.

When he cracked open the sliding glass door, the fresh night air hit Steve with raw knuckles. When he loosed the cap from the bottle, it slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground. And rolled. And rolled. 

Steve fumbled to grab it, chasing after the cap, and, stooping to stop its roll, just managed to pluck it from the ground. 

When he looked up, he was three feet from the edge of the pool. 

Steve froze. Steve had been frozen, by something entirely outside of his control. All he could do was stare at the water, at that gently rippling water. The wind was pushing it ever so gently. Steam drifted off the surface lazily. One push of the wind, and that steam would blow in Steve’s direction. Would wrap around him, infect him, invade his airways.

Raising the bottle with one trembling hand, Steve drank a little whiskey, then drank a little more.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood out there, staring at the pool, not moving forwards, not moving back, held in place by some mysterious, hypnotic force. He realized, at some point, that he had been swaying to some gentle rhythm, guided by the slow oscillation of the pool water. 

“It’s just a pool, Steve,” he said, like saying it out loud would make him believe it. The words evaporated into the night like so much steam.

Steve didn’t know why, but at that moment he thought of Billy Hargrove, who wasn’t scared of anything. What would he say?

“Back in Cali,” Steve said, pitching his voice down, “we got the ocean. You learn to swim when you’re ten days old, and if you die, you die.” He took another swig from the bottle, then mimed taking a cigarette from between his lips and throwing it to the ground. “Come on, Harrington. What’s the point of having a big fucking pool in your backyard if you aren’t gonna use it? Earn it, stupid. Earn it.”

Steve put the bottle down on the ground and took a few unsteady steps forward. Each one felt like he was pushing at the membrane of something, a water strider testing the surface tension. He squatted down, his balance already feeling a little off, and willed himself to reach out and touch the water. He could do it. 

“It’s only water, King Steve. What’s the big deal?” 

Shut up, Hargrove, Steve thought. He reached out and touched the water.

It was only water.

A gasping, short little bark of a laugh escaped Steve’s lips. It was only water. He waggled his fingers around in it, revelling in the sluggish resistance they found in the warmth of the pool. 

Steve found himself smiling. All this time, being afraid of it, and it was just a pool. It had always just been a pool. He let his hand slip in a further, closed his eyes, and–

Steve was falling. Steve was drowning. Steve was at the bottom of the pool, something with clammy hands grabbing and groping at his legs, and he didn’t dare look down at them. He couldn’t breathe; he was drowning, that was the only explanation, otherwise he would be able to breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he was going to die. He was going to die like Barb and then time he wouldn’t be able to pretend it wasn’t his fault. 

Steve’s lungs ached and burned and eventually, eventually, he let in a shallow gasp of air. Air, not water. Had he found the surface? Steve opened his eyes and saw the pool just in front of him and had to close them again, but that wasn’t any good, because he could see the pool there, too.

There were hands around his legs and he kicked back, scrambling across something that felt hard, but he still couldn’t shake them. Useless.

His hand shot back and crashed into something hard. There was a clinking sound and a cold liquid spread across his hand. Water? Was he in the water, still? 

He forced his eyes open again. He was about a yard back from the water, sitting on the ground, chest heaving. Whiskey was slowly gurgling out of the mouth of an overturned bottle, spreading across his hand and the ground. He grabbed the bottle quickly and righted it, but not before it had lost well over half its contents to the concrete.

“Jesus,” Steve whispered.

He wasn’t in the pool. He had never been in the pool, any more than a dip of the hand. He really was losing it. 

Standing on wobbly, foal-like legs, Steve managed to get back into the house. He didn’t really breathe until he’d shut and locked the sliding glass door behind him and turned the pool light off. Dark like that, it could almost blend into the night. He could almost forget it was there. 

He cleaned his hand and the outside of the Jack Daniel’s bottle, and replaced it in the cabinet. He’d figure out how to explain that later. His parents would probably buy it if he said he’d had a party. He was sure they had no idea he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. They’d give him a talking-to, maybe make him pay to replace it. It would still be leagues better than telling them the truth.

That night, Steve dreamed strange, drunken dreams. There were two stags fighting in the woods, their antlers interlocked.

“Stop it,” Steve said, but he was afraid to get too close. “Please stop. You’re going to hurt yourselves.”

The stags turned to look at him, and then there was only one stag, and Steve had antlers set in his forehead, and he charged forwards to fight.

The next day in school, Hargrove found him in the hall in-between classes. “You look like shit, Harrington.”

“Bite me,” said Steve.

He was distracted throughout the day, and tired. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up feeling rested. Steve wondered what the point was going to sleep, if he was going to wind up tired anyways. He’d rather have those hours to do something else, like homework or watching movies or… 

Steve stopped trying to think of other things he liked to do. It was too hard to come up with ones, and that only made him feel completely pathetic.

He supposed this restless sort of sleep was better than nothing. Than having to fill even more waking hours. But he still longed for the black, empty sleep he’d had in his childhood. Back when things didn’t have to mean so many other things.

On the basketball court, Steve crowded Hargrove. He thought it might throw him off his game. Instead, Hargrove just smiled and smiled like he thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

“Hey, Risky Business,” Hargrove said. “Long night?”

Steve’s annoyance manifested in a new crease between his eyebrows as he watched intently for an opening. “Do you have an off switch?” 

It continued like this for the next week. Steve crowded Hargrove. Hargrove crowded Steve. They passed each other in the hallway, locked in some strange, antagonistic one-on-one that extended long after their spats on the court. Steve was tired. Steve didn’t sleep. Steve didn’t touch, didn’t look at, didn’t think about the pool.

Steve dreamed. 

He was alone in an empty forest. There was no birdsong, no squirrel chatter, no moon or stars to light his way. Just the trees, the ground, and the great expanse of black above him. He walked and walked and went nowhere. He climbed the same tree up and up for hours and hours until he grew bored. He hopped down and reached the ground easy. He’d never really gone anywhere.

Steve sat down on the earthen floor and looked up at that endless darkness above him. It was at once impossibly far and crushingly close. Steve couldn’t bear to look at it for too long.

He reached up and felt around his head. All he felt was hair. It was, somehow, a let down, and he had the sinking, nauseating feeling that it was all his own fault.

Steve asked nobody in particular: “Where did all the deer go?”


	5. Thursday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for the amazing response to this <33 i'm having so much fun delving into the story and i hope that you're having as much fun reading it!!

When he was nine years old, Billy brought a friend home. He so rarely did this, but he knew that his dad was going to be out, and he really liked this boy. His name was Eli, and they’d met in their third grade social studies class. Eli was outgoing and friendly and wore a bunch of friendship bracelets on his wrists. He was really good at making them, weaving wild neon patterns with deft fingers. 

“Will you teach me?” Billy asked. He didn’t actually expect Eli to agree. This other kid barely knew Billy. Why would he give away the secret recipe to his specialness?

But Eli was eager to oblige, and set up the threads for Billy to make his own. An easy pattern, little purple and yellow candy stripes. He showed Billy how to test for length, letting Billy wrap the prototype around his bony wrist, and then taught him to tie it off at the end. 

“Here,” Eli said, and took one from off his own wrist. It was a really pretty one, with little fluctuating waves of blue and white that looked like crashing waves. “Now you have one for each wrist. You’ve got to be even.”

“Well, of course.” Billy laughed. Eli laughed. Billy brought him home after school. 

They played in Billy’s room a while, and then, when they grew bored, ran down to the beach together. They weren’t wearing their swim shorts, so they played an endlessly entertaining little game with the ebb and flow of the waves. It went like this: when the water receded, Eli and Billy would get as close to the frothy edge of the waves as possible, toes digging into the sand in preparation, and then watch a small wave form. Only at the very last second, when the water was about to flood over their feet, would they turn and run, shrieking and laughing, back towards the shore. 

Billy always stayed just barely ahead of the water, but Eli was shorter and slower and sometimes he would come away washed clean to his ankles. 

“Come on, Eli!” Billy had said. “It’s like you want the water to get you.”

And Eli had just shrugged. “It feels kind of nice.”

Billy didn’t understand that. It was a hot day, and the sand burned once you ran out to the drier land, but Billy would rather die than let the waves catch up to him. It didn’t matter if it would feel nice. You had to stay out. That was the game. 

They played like this until a still-bright May evening, and Billy couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing than skirting the waves like this with Eli, getting as close to danger as possible and then turning and booking it back to safety with the devil nipping at their heels. 

When they’d picked up their flip flops and walked back to Billy’s house for dinner, Neil had been there waiting. 

“This is Eli,” Billy said. “From school. Can he stay for dinner?”

Neil had looked them both over with hard eyes. That wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. Billy’s dad’s eyes were never particularly soft. 

But then he said, “I think it’s time for him to be going now. It’s getting late.” 

“Oh.” Billy’s shoulders drooped, but he knew better than to start up an argument. Especially in front of company. That never ever ended well. “Okay.” 

“Do you live far, Eli?” Billy’s dad asked. “I can drive you home.”

Eli turned to look at Billy. Maybe it was something in Billy’s eyes. It had to have been, because all Billy had done was stare. But Eli said, “No thank you, that’s okay.” And Billy let out a little breath of relief. 

He didn’t know what he’d been worried about, exactly. But he had been right to be worried, because after Eli left with a small, tight smile and a wave, Neil had called Billy into the kitchen.

“What are those?” He was pointing to Billy’s wrists. 

Billy looked down. “They’re friendship bracelets. Eli taught me how to make them.”

Neil shook his head the slightest bit. “That’s not normal, Billy. You know that.”

Did he? Billy wasn’t sure. “Oh.”

“You don’t wear things like that.” His dad’s tone wasn’t unkind. Like he was just teaching Billy something. Looking out for him. But then it got a little sharper, and Billy’s heart jumped up into his throat. “What were you doing with him today?”

“Just– playing,” Billy said, and he didn’t know why it sounded like a lie. It wasn’t. “We went down to the beach, that’s all.”

Neil nodded slowly. “Look, Billy. I need you to understand this. There are certain types of people in this world that you stay away from.”

Billy didn’t say anything. He felt like crying. He didn’t know what was different about Eli, other than that he was nice and good with bracelets and kind of bad at running. He wanted to ask his dad what the difference was. He felt the same he’d felt three years ago, when he’d learned about ugliness: in need of a frame of reference. Which ones? Why? Me, too?

His dad crouched down, took Billy’s face in one hand, and squeezed his cheeks. It was just on the edge of hurting. Billy didn’t move. “Do you understand me, Billy?”

Billy didn’t, but he nodded his head hastily and made out a “yes, sir.” 

Neil squeezed tight, then let him go. That night, Billy took off the friendship bracelets and threw them both in the trash. The one he’d made, and the one that Eli had given to him. They were beautiful. They weren’t worth it. The next day in school, Billy didn’t talk to Eli. And the next. Eventually, Eli got the message and stopped trying. 

It was 1984, and Billy was driving home from his school in Hawkins, Indiana, yelling at his step-sister about a boy. 

“You don’t talk to me for a month,” Max was yelling at him from the passenger seat, “and now you’re yelling at me about this like it’s any of your–”

“I’ve talked to you,” Billy shouted over her. “Don’t be a fucking drama queen, Maxine.”

“Even if I liked him, which I don’t, you have absolutely no right–”

“Oh, I forgot, you’re still just a little kid who thinks her actions have no consequences–”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Max crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t even like me. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. You say it every day, I’m not your sister–”

“You aren’t.” 

“No, I’m not!” Max was close to crying. Billy could hear it in her voice. “I’m sorry you hate me so much, but just because you can’t handle the idea of someone actually liking me doesn’t mean–”

“Are you really that dense?”

“Stop interrupting me!”

Billy reached out and cranked the windows down. He was driving fast– there was never anybody else on these stupid hicktown back-country roads– and the wind whipped through the car. Maxine’s hair started going everywhere, a little red wildfire in the passenger seat. 

“Fine,” Billy shouted over the wind. “Talk.”

“No,” Max shouted back. “I hate you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, good!”

“Good,” Billy said. They drove for a while like that.

Max cracked first. “I just–”

“Oh, so you do want to talk.” 

“Lucas is cool. We play in the arcade and stuff. There’s a bunch of other kids, too. I’m just trying to make friends. You know, friends? People that you hang out with?”

“Yeah, Maxine, I’m familiar with the concept.” Billy grit his teeth. “I’m not against you having friends, that’s not–”

“Yes it is.” Max was desperately trying to gather up her flyaway hair into some semblance of a ponytail. Billy’s was going everywhere, too, but he didn’t feel the need to make such a scene about it. “You’re just mad that you don’t have any friends and you want to take it out on me.”

“Uh, news flash, dipshit, I have friends,” Billy snapped. “I’m actually going to a party tonight.”

“Really?”

No. “Yes.” Billy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, too much energy pent up in his body. “And if I didn’t have friends here, Max, whose fault would that be? Whose fault is it that we’re here in the middle of fucking nowhere?”

“How long are you gonna be mad at me?” Max asked, and Billy realized that she genuinely wanted an answer. She waited for a moment, then, not receiving one: “A month? A year? What’s the warranty on this? Five years? I’m sorry I got worried about you, but you’re the one who snuck out of the house and–”

Fingers tight on the steering wheel. “Don’t.”

“Billy, slow down.”

He couldn’t really hear her. Her voice was muddy and garbled. Wrong-sounding. Out of place here, on the hill, in the dark, with Neil’s boot on Sid’s chest, with Sid making that awful gurgling sound and blood coming up onto his lips. His lips. Billy’s fault, should have known, hadn’t his dad warned him time and time again? Fucking friendship bracelets go in the trash. But he had been stupid, had been selfish, had wanted those secret sunset hours too much. 

“Billy, slow down!”

He snapped back to the here and now. He lifted his foot off the gas. 

“Jesus!” Max gasped. 

Billy’s heart pounded in his ears and the car began to slow, back to something reasonable, something that felt less like dying, like running and running with the waves in hot pursuit. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Max said.

Billy couldn’t help but laugh. People kept on asking that, recently. Didn’t they know? Couldn’t they tell? “Max,” he said, when the laughter stopped bubbling forth. “I’m just getting real tired of you pretending there aren’t stakes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Billy cranked the window back up. It became very quiet, and still, only the car bumping along beneath them. “And it’s not worth it.”

“Maybe you just think that,” Max said, “because you’ve never actually cared about somebody else.” 

Billy didn’t speak to her again for the rest of that car ride. He didn’t know why he’d even tried. She hadn’t learned, she was never going to learn, not until something made her. Billy hadn’t learned until he’d learned the hard way. Maybe she really was his sister.

Something about that sent a shiver down Billy’s spine. They drove in silence, he tried not to think about it, she fumed, and then he dropped her off at home. 

There was not, in fact, a party tonight. And Billy couldn’t exactly host one. He did know Tommy’s home number– was it desperate to call? Billy had been there one month and only gone to one party, although he’d been invited to more. He should have gone. He told himself that he hadn’t so he could keep up his whole man of mystery shtick, but really he just sort of hated those people. 

But his skin was crawling, the little hairs on the back of his neck raised, and he didn’t think he could handle being in the house tonight. He just knew he’d end up bubbling over and saying something stupid, and then it’d be a whole thing. 

So he called up Tommy and pulled one of the easier cons: making someone think that Billy’s idea was their own.

“Hagan residence, Tommy speaking.”

“Wow. Very official.”

“Oh– oh shit, Billy! Hey, hey, sorry. People call sometimes looking for my parents, you know–”

“Yeah, sure, I know. Hey, are you doing anything tonight?”

“I don’t have plans or anything. I mean, homework, probably, and Carol was gonna–”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just mean– back in Cali, we usually partied on Thursday nights.”

“Oh– really? On Thursdays?”

“Yeah, man. It’s like the new Friday. Four day weekend, baby. You don’t do that here?”

“I mean, we don’t not do that. I–yeah, sure, of course we do. We do that sometimes. I was just, you know, wasn’t sure if you wanted to this week, that’s all. But, no, for sure, I bet someone’s up to host.”

“I might be busy myself,” Billy said. This was so stupid. “Don’t want to go to some sort of lame last minute party.”

“No, we were totally already talking about it. Totally. I was just waiting to invite you until we were sure. But, like, Thursdays are one hundred percent the new Fridays. Everyone knows that. Hey, you hold here for a minute and I’ll call you back with the details, alright?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, you have to come. You have to. It won’t be a party without you, man. That last one you skipped was lame as fuck. Come on.”

“Fine, fine. Chill out, would you? I’ll come.”

“Awesome. Absolutely. I’ll call you right back. Okay.”

And that was that. The party was on at Tina’s house at 8:00pm. Her parents were in Costa Rica or something and she had free rein of the place. It was, Tommy confessed, “no Steve Harrington’s house”, but, as the freckled boy so eloquently put it, “fuck that guy anyways”. Billy felt kind of embarrassed about the whole charade. An unfathomable part of him wished Tommy would call him on his bullshit, just once, so Billy could feel a little less like he was living in a backwoods storybook town where nothing he did really mattered, but that was never gonna happen. The only person he’d met here who had challenged him on anything had been– well, Harrington.

“Billy,” Max said.

He didn’t respond, just brushed past her to head towards his room. Had to fix his hair. Cool outfit. It wasn’t too warm for leather, right? Not in the evening.

“Billy.”

He was pretty sure that Max was in his doorway now, but he was ignoring her today. No, Billy was going to have a good evening. If he wanted it enough, he could manifest it. He grabbed some pomade and fiddled with a curl.

There was a hand on his back then, and Billy whirled around, heart suddenly up and pounding in his ears. 

It was, of course, just Max. “Billy.”

“Jesus Christ, what do you want?” Billy was still breathing a little too sharply, eyes a little too wide and panicked, but it translated easily enough into anger. “Can’t you tell I’m busy?”

“Mom and Neil are out,” Max said. 

“Yeah, and?” Billy grabbed his leather jacket from a hook in the closet and tried it on.

“They won’t be back until, like, eight.”

He turned on her. “Okay, again, I am seriously struggling with the part where this has to do with me.”

“I don’t…” her face was violently red. “I need dinner, Billy.”

“Just put a TV dinner in the microwave.”

“We don’t have any.”

“So– Jesus.” He rubbed a hand across his brow. “You can’t make yourself anything?”

“Mom didn’t say what I was allowed to take,” Max said, slowly, and Billy could tell she was hating every second of this as much as he was. “And if they have something planned, I don’t want to grab the wrong thing and…”

Billy got it. She was afraid, afraid of Neil. Even though Neil had never touched her, there was always that threat, dangling above. No one knew what straw would break that camel’s back. Billy, personally, didn’t think it would happen. There was a fundamental difference between Max and Billy, one that Billy had learned a long time ago, and one that Neil was eager to remind him of. “Alright. Alright. Let’s see what we have.”

Billy ended up making pancakes. They had a mix in the pantry, and it was easy enough. He remembered being seven and standing on a stool in his old kitchen, watching his mom pour out and flip those perfect circles. 

His weren’t perfect, and they were only vaguely circular, but when he piled them onto Max’s and his plates he could see her fighting not to smile. He plopped down in a chair and poured a sizable amount of syrup across the stack.

“Ew,” Max said. “This isn’t even real food, you know.”

Billy frowned. “Wait, my hearing must be going. I could’ve sworn you just said something snotty, but that can’t be right. You must’ve said thank you, right? I’m sure I heard you wrong.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Thanks, Billy.”

Billy didn’t feel awful. He shoveled bites of pancake into his mouth. “And it’s called breakfast for dinner. Never heard of it?”

“I think it’s called you don’t know how to cook.” She wasn’t quite laughing, but she ate, and she could see her eyes flutter briefly closed in satisfaction.

“If you tell your mom about this,” Billy warned, “I’ll never make food for you again.”

“Duh,” Max said. 

Neil and Susan came home just as Billy was going out. He’d actually tried to leave even earlier than he needed to, hoping to miss them, but luck was not on his side today. Luck always had been a generally antagonizing force in his life. 

Neil seemed to be in a good mood, one arm around Susan. She was smiling. Neil was giving the closest he had to a smile beneath that mustache. Billy didn’t find it particularly convincing. He tried to just slip past them, head down, and made it as far as one hand on the doorknob before Neil called after him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Hanging out with Tommy and Carol,” Billy said. Tommy and Carol had never been over here, of course, never met Neil, but after the first time Billy had mentioned them Neil had apparently done some digging, asked his friends from work, and found out that Tommy and Carol came from respectable sorts. 

“On a Thursday night?”

It’s the new Friday, Billy thought. He didn’t say it. He didn’t think his dad would laugh. “They were gonna help me with homework a little,” he said instead. This was an awful lie; over the past month, Billy had not only caught up on what he’d missed, but risen to the top of most of his classes. Calculus was fun. English was a breeze. He barely paid attention in it and he got straight A’s. And he knew that this was on his own merits, because the English teacher was a doddering old man who had almost certainly not been taken in my Billy’s wiles. 

“Good,” Neil said. The idea that Billy was doing poorly, that he needed to be helped, that there was something wrong, always made sense. That was one lie Billy always got away with, because it sounded realer than the truth. “It’s still a school night. Be home by eleven.” 

Three hours of party. More like two and a half, with driving time. That was fine. Not ideal, not enough time to have much of a drink and let it wear off before driving home. He’d figure it out. Billy gazed levelly at his dad and nodded once, sharply. “Yes, sir.”

That usually appeased Neil. It should appease him. Billy hadn’t said anything wrong. But Neil didn’t walk away, didn’t go back to smiling with Susan. Instead, he came towards Billy, until he was too close, a foot away, crowding Billy’s back against the door. Was he going to do this now? In front of Max, still sitting at the kitchen table, pretending like she wasn’t watching? And for what?

Billy had heard once that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. He was pretty sure his particular brand of crazy was still assuming, after all this time, that Neil needed a reason. 

Neil put one firm hand on Billy’s chest and pushed, almost gently, until Billy was good and pinned against the door. “You aren’t lying to me, are you?”

Billy shook his head slowly. 

“Because you know what happens when you lie to me.” 

Billy didn’t need him to say it. He knew. 

Neil lowered his voice. This was just for him and Billy. “This is your fresh start. You only get one of those, you know.” 

“Yes, sir.” It was little more than a whisper, and Billy wished for the billionth time that he wasn’t so fucking weak. 

Neil let go, and there was a silence in which their eye contact burned and raged and swallowed Billy up. Then Neil was turning and talking to Susan, and Billy didn’t look back at them, and definitely not at Max, as he slipped out the door into the night. 

He knew vaguely where Tina’s house was. At the very least, he knew the neighborhood. It was the one with all the biggest houses and the manicured lawns. He just puttered around there in the Camaro until he found the house with all the cars parked outside and the lights on, music banging from open windows. Real inconspicuous. 

On a fucking Thursday. Billy rolled his eyes.

He was burning again. Warning: we will be experiencing some turbulence. Fasten your seatbelts now. Billy wished he could go on an airplane. He’d like to go hiking in Mexico, or wandering the moors of Scotland, or sitting in a gondola in Venice. He thought he could be a very good gondolier. He missed the water. 

But instead he was here, in Hawkins, Indiana, just about as far from adventure as he could possibly be. He adjusted his leather jacket and strolled into the party. 

They cheered when he came in. It made him smile, but not in a nice way. This was all bullshit. Billy wanted blood, could smell it in the proverbial water. Someone handed him a cup. The smart thing to do would be to pretend to drink, to leave it somewhere untouched, play up how drunk and crazy Billy Hargrove was. He could do that. And then he could drive back, make it home by eleven, skirt under Neil’s notice. 

But Billy was angry. Billy was mean. Billy was a little crazy. He chugged whatever was in the red solo cup with an animal ferocity and then crushed it in his fist, threw it into the crowd. Everyone freaked out. 

It was only a matter of time before someone started a fight. And, let’s face it, they all knew it was going to be Billy. He sat on a couch, alternating between a beer and a cigarette, watching people watch him. They looked sort of excited, sort of scared. Like he was a celebrity. Or maybe a lion, prowling its pen at a zoo. Someone started talking about Steve Harrington, and, finally, something worth his attention. 

“There’s no way,” Tammy Thompson was saying. “Steve’s a goof, but he isn’t stupid.”

“No, really.” This came from some boy Billy didn’t recognize. A little skinny, huge Adam’s apple. “I’m in World History with him and he’s definitely failing.”

“If he, like, fail-fails, do they make him repeat junior year?” Heather Holloway was giggling. 

“Harrington’s loaded,” the boy scoffed. “He can just pay for a tutor, right?”

Then Tommy was there– the first Billy had seen of him all night, so much for the fervent invitation– and waving his arms around. “You guys, you guys, who wants to see my Harrington impression?”

Billy was sure he didn’t, but Tommy was clearly even more plastered than he was and seemed determined to make a fool of himself. It wasn’t a very good impression. Tommy kept popping his collar every few words and talking about Nancy Wheeler. But it seemed to make everyone else laugh. Billy allowed himself an indulgent chuckle when Tommy tried to muss his hair to Steve’s epic coiffure’s height; it was too short to do it properly, but the effort was appreciated.

Billy got tired of it pretty quickly. He stood at what he thought was near the end of this little routine, making for the punch bowl– he was already drunk enough, no going back now, why not enjoy himself?– and Tommy, still waving his arms around like a goddamn court jester, backed into him. 

Tommy’s drink went all over Billy’s shirt. There wasn’t a record scratch, but there may as well have been for all the hush that ensued. Billy could let it go. It wasn’t really a big deal. No one would think any less of him for keeping his cool. But, really, this was what he had been looking for. An excuse.

“What the hell, man?” He spread his arms, looking down at the punch-stained tee. 

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, sorry, man,” Tommy said, backpedaling, swaying slightly. 

Billy reached out to clutch him by the front of his shirt. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Coming out of Billy’s mouth, it had grit, venom. It felt vicious. He guessed Steve must have really hated his guts to say it like he had. 

“C’mon, Billy, man, it was an accident–”

“Do you ever shut up, Hagan?” He let go of Tommy, thrust him back. “Jesus. You think you’re so fucking funny, don’t you?” He waited just a second for an answer. “You aren’t. Nobody thinks you are. What you are is a goddamn annoyance.”

Tommy was bristling. “You’re drunk.” Good. Fight back. There must be an ounce of real rage somewhere in Tommy, Billy knew there must. Once he found that, he was golden. 

“You wanna know what Harrington has that you don’t?” Billy poked a finger into Tommy’s chest, hard, advancing on him. “Why he isn’t even king anymore and people still talk about him more than they talk about you? Why anyone only fucking listens to you when you’re talking about him?” 

Tommy was boiling over. Billy was pushing him across the room, one finger jabbing at him, and Tommy kept on moving backwards, but he was almost there. At the breaking point. Billy knew the breaking point intimately, having long been broken himself. 

Billy leaned in real close and sneered: “Because he has balls, Tommy, and you never will.”

He braced for impact. Tommy was going to hit him. He knew it. That’s what happens. Why wouldn’t he hit him?

Tommy didn’t hit him. Instead, loudly, completely stony-faced, Tommy said, “Nobody actually likes you, Hargrove. You’re just a goddamn novelty. I hope you know that.” And walked away. 

Everyone was looking at Billy. Billy was watching Tommy leave. What was that? What was that? That wasn’t the game. Tommy was a follower, Billy had clocked that from the first. He was a sheep, a Shakespearean fool, except without any of the witticisms. Nobody respected Tommy Hagan. Except, here they were, looking at Billy, who was standing drunk in the middle of some random girl’s living room with mystery punch all over his fucking shirt. 

He stalked out after Tommy, and everyone parted to let him through, magnets repelled by his very proximity. He caught up to the boy in Tina’s freshly mowed side yard, and didn’t bother easing into it. He charged Tommy, head down like a Spanish bull in hot pursuit of something red, and tackled him from behind. The two went sprawling into the grass, all tangled arms and legs. Tommy’s elbow ended up in Billy’s nose, and by the time they extricated themselves from one another there was blood everywhere. 

People had followed them out. Steve knew because he heard Carol’s distinct voice: “Holy shit!” And a girl that was probably Tina saying, “oh man, if the neighbors call my parents they’ll be so pissed.” 

It was a quiet struggle; Billy and Tommy both seemed to be all out of words. They grunted and huffed as blows landed. Billy managed to struggle to his feet before Tommy and catch the freckled boy good in the stomach with a kick. But Tommy must have been having some kind of crazy adrenaline rush, and Billy must have been a little too drunk, because when Tommy lunged at Billy’s knees, Billy went down hard.

Tommy was on top of Billy, but Billy was kind of awkwardly curled, and most of the blows came down on Billy’s left arm and hip. Billy twisted and fought against it, and eventually shook Tommy off. It was a messy, dirty fight, more on the ground thn on their feet, and Billy should have been easily able to win, except somewhere in the dirt there his head had begun to swim, and his arms started moving a little slower, and he was definitely too drunk for this. Tommy was surprisingly alert, and Billy sluggishly wondered if the boy had stolen his move of mostly fake-sipping. 

Had Tommy been looking for a fight? Been ready for it? Billy had thought he had been. Billy didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted to sleep, he wanted to read with his mom, he wanted to stand there and let the waves wash over his feet, rules be damned. Steve’s voice in his head, Max’s voice as an echo: “What’s wrong with you?”

Tommy punched Billy in the face, and something cracked. 

It all paused. Billy’s vision was swimming, the back of his head on the ground. There was a garbled sound, like someone talking underwater. It took him a minute to realize it was Tommy speaking.

“Shit,” Tommy was saying. “Come on, man, you’re okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–” 

The pressure let off his chest, and Billy rolled over. Spat out some blood. He couldn’t breathe through his nose. He faintly registered that his nose was hurting bad. Like, bad bad. He propped himself up with one arm and blinked furiously, trying to gather his senses a little bit. 

Tommy was crouching next to him. “I’m sorry. We’re cool. We’re cool, right? I’m just– I’m super drunk, man, we’re both drunk. I didn’t think I’d actually– Billy?” 

Billy grabbed onto Tommy’s shoulder and used it to pull himself up to an unsteady upright position. Carol was approaching, nervously, and Tommy still had a hand on Billy, was asking him something. Billy shook his head and began to walk.

Not back to his car. Definitely not driving now. And he couldn’t go home like this. Even the idea got his heart racing, woke him up a little. If Billy went home like this, Neil might actually kill him this time. No. He walked, in meandering zigzags, away from Tommy and Carol and the stupid Thursday night party. Through Tina’s backyard, pushing through some trees into a wooded area. Billy didn’t know where he was going, but he couldn’t stay there, and he couldn’t go home. So he struck out into the night, alone and limping. 

Billy wasn’t burning anymore. His ribs hurt, and his hip hurt, and his nose really, really hurt. He wasn’t a fire, wasn’t a storm, wasn’t an ocean. Walking alone through the trees, just for a moment, Billy let himself be a boy. 

He wasn’t sure how long he walked. It probably felt like longer than it actually was. But eventually, his legs started giving out, and he felt the overwhelming urge to sit and rest. 

There was a light through the trees. A house, with light shining through these big floor-to-ceiling windows. Billy cut through the trees towards the house, approaching it from the back. 

When he stepped out onto concrete, he saw the pool. God, he missed the ocean so much. He stumbled towards it and sat down beside the water. It looked so nice. Billy was pretty sure he was gonna pass out. This was, all at once, unfathomably funny to him. 

He was sitting next to a stranger’s pool, drunk off his ass, probably sporting a broken nose, without his car or any money or any friends. And the kicker was, he was pretty sure he wasn’t gonna make it home by 11:00. Billy threw his head back and laughed and laughed.


	6. You're an idiot, Steve Harrington

Steve was determined to have a good night. He’d put on one of his Duran Duran records, the ones he’d bought with the cash his dad had given him for his last birthday, and turned it up as loud as it could go. He put on his suit jacket from last year’s homecoming and danced in front of the mirror to The Reflex, teasing his hair up higher and higher.

Not that he had plans. That was laughable. It was a Thursday night. But Steve had gotten a C on his recent English paper, which was a passing grade and thusly a cause for celebration. So he’d bought himself a whole big box of expensive chocolates and decided to throw himself a little party. 

It wasn’t sad. It was awesome. Steve popped the collar of his suit jacket, slid on some Ray-Bans, and then pushed them down his nose to waggle one eyebrow at himself in the mirror. 

“Lookin’ slick, bud,” he told his reflection. “Real classy motherfucker. Oh, are you– are you Steve Harrington? Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington? Wow. Enchanté.” 

Steve spun on his heel to the beat of the chorus and tossed a raspberry-filled chocolate a foot above his head. It missed his mouth by about a foot and tumbled onto the carpet, but Steve dove after it quickly. Five second rule. Anyways, no one was looking. 

“Every little thing the reflex does leaves an answer with a question mark,” Steve sang, mostly under his breath, playing it real cool. He spun to find that his reflection was looking back at him. “Window shopping, I see,” he told it. “Well, you can look, but you can’t touch.” 

Everything was fine. His parents were gone– together, this time– to some kind of conference in Tulsa. He had the place to himself for a week, which probably meant more like two weeks, and he’d gotten a passable grade, and he looked fly as hell. It was just as well that no one else was here to see it. They’d never appreciate his style anyways. Everyone he knew just had such pedestrian tastes. Nancy– Nancy most of all. 

“You’d think,” he said over the music, letting his reflection in on a little seed of gossip, “that having a photographer for a boyfriend might’ve forced her to develop some taste. But no. No, she never appreciated you, or your impeccable taste, or your amazing hair. She’s happy with Bowl Cut McGee. That, Steve–” he shot himself a stern glance– “is why you never would’ve worked. Because you, Mr. Harrington, have never been content with the mediocre and the– the fucking– there’s a word for it, it’s like anal, but it’s not anal, it’s– jesus, fuck.”

So he might have been drinking a little. He’d tried to make a martini like Bond made them, shaken not stirred, but he couldn’t find the cocktail shaker or any vermouth. So it was basically just gin with an olive in it. It kind of tasted like shit, but Steve could raise it to himself and say, in his best Sean Connery voice, “Bond. James Bond.”

Steve had had ample time to mull it over, and he’d decided that his utmost favorite thing about being alone what that you never had to feel stupid. Because even if you did stupid stuff, no one would see you, so it wouldn’t matter, so you could just have fun. 

He’d been having a lot of fun in the past week. The house looked like shit. He was definitely running the electricity bill way up, passing out in the living room and keeping the lights on all night. He just found his sleep so much better when there wasn’t any dark. And when there were more things around to see in the living room, more mess illuminated by more lamps, it stopped him from looking out at the pool so much.

He’d almost managed to keep it entirely out of his mind tonight. The music was loud, the chocolate delicious, and his reflection was good company. Every time Steve looked over, there he was, looking back at himself, smiling. 

But then the record ended and he had to go turn it over. He caught a look at himself in the mirror in that moment, that dead-air silent moment, and felt vaguely queasy. He looked ridiculous. What the fuck was he doing? 

He needed the music to be happening again. He crossed to the record player to turn it on, the record player that sat atop the cabinet, which sat against the huge wall of windows facing out towards the pool. He didn’t look. He didn’t look. 

Something moved out there. 

Steve froze. Fully froze, one hand halfway to the record, Ray-Bans perched atop his nose. He didn’t know what was out there, but, whatever it was, maybe it could only see him if he was moving. It was hard to see the darkness through the shades. He started. There was nothing there. He’d imagined it. Of course he had. Steve had finally snapped. One week alone and he was going full Jack Torrance. 

But then something moved again. Steve reached up, ever so slowly, stock-still in front of the window, and took his glasses off. 

It wasn’t a coyote. It wasn’t some kind of nightmare monster, either. It was a person. There was a person, a man, sitting on the far side of Steve’s pool, covered in– yeah, covered in blood. 

That was, of course, pretty much the absolute worst thing it could have been. 

The guy didn’t seem to have seen Steve. Steve was torn between staying absolutely still until the possibly-murderer left and going to find a weapon. He stayed like that for a second, instincts warring, until the bloody man began to laugh. It was horrible and ferocious and loud enough that Steve could hear it through the glass. 

“Nope,” Steve breathed, and got the fuck out of there. 

There were his parents’ fancy knives in the knife block, but Steve remembered something that his dad had said about knife fights, and about how the winner is just the one who doesn’t bleed out first, and he couldn’t bring himself to grasp one of them. The next closest thing was the baseball bat, propped up against a wall of the living room. Steve hadn’t played baseball with his dad in six years, but his dad liked to keep the bat and ball and gloves out there, just as a visual reminder that they had once done things together and an implication that they could again one day. 

Steve picked up the wooden bat, doing a weird sort of crouch-walk. Steve was historically excellent at stealth. “Like a ninja,” he whispered to himself, creeping up towards the sliding glass door with the bat in hand. 

The figure wasn’t laughing anymore. He was just sort of sitting there, one hand dangling in the pool. 

The pool. Why did every fucked up thing in Steve’s life have to do with that goddamn pool? Steve hoped his parents would realize he was never gonna go in it again and that it was a waste of money so then they could drain it and fill it with fucking cement. 

Okay. Cool. Steve was just gonna go out there, tell this guy to fuck off, and not get murdered. Maybe bash him with the baseball bat a little bit. This was fine. This was a normal Thursday night. 

Steve inhaled shakily, exhaled, and slid the door open. It made a squeaking sound, and the figure looked up a little bit. His movements were sluggish, strange, and Steve approached warily, skirting far around the edge of the pool. “This is private property,” he called out into the night.

In the seven or so seconds it took his eyes to adjust properly, the man had not left. He had, instead, started laughing again. When Steve began to be able to see him properly, he realized why. 

Billy Hargrove was sitting by Steve’s pool. Laughing. Face and shirt covered in blood, little clumps of dirt in his curls. Hargrove drew his hand from the pool and wiped it on his jeans, leaning back to look at Steve. 

Steve lowered his bat, then raised it halfway again. This was Billy Hargrove, after all. Could still be a murderer. “What. The actual fuck. Are you doing in my backyard?”

“Is that a baseball bat?” Hargrove’s voice was different. It still had that amused lilt to it, like he was toying with Steve, but the words came through a little muddled. He was drunk, Steve realized. 

“Uh, yeah. There was– there is– a stranger in my yard,” Steve said. He stopped his approach about two yards from Hargrove, which he considered a relatively safe distance. No distance was fully safe, as far as Steve was concerned, but this way he could get a better look at him. “What happened to you?”

“Wait, wait, let me get this right.” Hargrove put a finger up in the air. Definitely drunk, drunker than Steve, who had sobered up right around the moment he’d seen a figure by the pool. “You see a stranger come in your backyard, right, and your first instinct is to grab a baseball bat?”

“You have blood all over you. You could’ve been a– a murderer or something,” Steve finished lamely. It had made so much sense in his head.

“Okay, sure,” Hargrove nodded, still grinning like Steve was being stupid. He was always grinning like that. Now, though, there was blood between his teeth. It didn’t make him look any less frightening. “So, dude covered in blood. You don’t, say, call the cops. You didn’t call the cops, right?”

“No.” Steve lowered the bat a little. 

“No, right, so, you’re like, this guy has blood all over him,” Hargrove continued, “but you don’t think, oh, maybe something happened to him. You go right to murderer. What if I was the one getting murdered?”

“Well, you weren’t. You aren’t. Are you?” Steve squinted at him. Where was all the blood coming from? The nexus seemed to be Hargrove’s nose. “Jesus. How the fuck do you know where I live?”

“I don’t,” Hargrove said. “I mean, I do now. I was just… in the neighborhood.” He started laughing again. It seemed to hurt him, because he kept wincing and his hand went to his side, but that didn’t seem to be incentive enough for him to stop. “It’s all good, Stevie-boy, you just– you just go back in your house and go to sleep. It’s a school night.”

“What? No.” Steve frowned. “I’m not leaving you out here.”

“You inviting me into your place, Harrington?” Hargrove was, Steve thought, trying to wink. It wasn’t going super well.

“Um, no, I was more thinking you would leave?” Steve lowered the baseball bat the rest of the way. Hargrove didn’t seem to be particularly interested in beating him up again. He wasn’t even standing up. Steve wondered if he could. “Like, maybe, go home?”

Hargrove laughed and, to Steve’s mounting horror, laid all the way down on the ground. “I’ll do that. I’ll go right on and do that.” 

“Do you– where’s your car? How did you get here?” Steve walked over, put his hands on his hips, and stared down at Hargrove. He knew, just knew, that he looked like his mother, but he did sort of feel like her right now. Stern and disapproving. 

“Walked,” Hargrove said, and reached up to rub at his nose. His hand came back covered in blood and he started laughing again, just this side of hysterical. 

“Would you stop doing that?” It was kind of freaking Steve out. “And I wasn’t under the impression that we were neighbors.”

“Walked from the party,” Hargrove said, like that was any kind of clarification. At least the stench of booze made sense, but Steve could’ve cracked that one himself. “He was right. This place is better.” 

Seeing as Hargrove didn’t seem to be voluntarily moving any time soon, Steve placed the bat on the ground with a sigh and walked right over to him, crouching at his side. He surveyed Hargrove’s injuries and definitely didn’t think about the pool’s gaping mouth just behind them. 

“What happened to your nose?” 

“What happened to your face?” Hargroved blinked up at him.

“What? Nothing ha–”

“Sure looks like it.” Hargrove started giggling again. Steve got the joke, but he also didn’t get the joke. There was some bigger joke, some kind of cosmic amusement in the night, and Steve thought he was probably better off not being in on it.

“Get up,” Steve said, to no response. “Get up, Hargrove.” He reached out and poked Hargrove in the ribs, and Hargrove’s hand shot up and caught Steve’s wrist in a vice-like grip. Apparently his reflexes were still intact. 

“There’s an idiom about poking a bear.” Hargrove was hard to understand, very mumbly, but Steve got the gist. 

Steve sighed and tried to extricate his finger to no avail. “You know, I was really having a good night. Do you exist purely to fuck up my happiness?” 

“I was having a good night, too.” Hargrove was still grabbing Steve’s finger, but he wasn’t really looking at it anymore. Steve wasn’t sure if the boy was aware he was still holding on. “Still am. Best night ever.” 

“Okay, so,” Steve started, finally pulling his finger away from Hargrove’s grasp, “I really don’t know what you want me to do with this. Unless you actually want me to call the cops…”

That seemed to snap Hargrove back into reality a little. At least enough to make him sit up, then awkwardly struggle to his feet. “Wouldn’t have come here if I’d known it was your place, anyways. Ugly fucking house.” 

“I mean, it’s, like, an awesome house, but yeah.” Steve eyed him. “Sure.”

“Nice pool, though.” Hargrove pointed at it, finally vertical. For now.

“Not really.” 

“Did you know–” Hargrove was swaying on his feet– “that you suck at basketball? So bad.” 

“If I’m so bad, then why are you always crowding me?” Steve raised an eyebrow.

“You’re really– really not good at stuff, King Steve.” 

“You’re drunk,” Steve said. “And I thought we were over calling me that. Everyone else is.” 

“I am not,” Hargrove said, hs eyes growing suddenly dark, “like these fucking people. These– Hawkins– this town– so stupid. Don’t know anything. Don’t do shit. Stupid people.”

“Uh huh.” Steve wondered, not for the first time tonight, if this was real life. 

“You know what’s a novelty?” Hargrove swayed forwards and planted two fingers in the center of Steve’s chest, pushing. “Indiana. Indiana’s a novelty.”

“I don’t think that’s what the word novelty means.” Steve swiped Hargrove’s fingers away, which was a bad move, because apparently Hargrove was putting a lot of his weight on them, and he went stumbling forwards into Steve. Steve caught him reflexively, tried to push him back up to standing.

“Don’t touch me,” Hargrove slurred, trying to pull away.

“I’m not– you’re falling over, man.”

“Get your hands off me!” Hargrove ripped himself back, away from Steve– which, for the record, Steve was more than happy about– and glared at Steve with that real mean look. The one he’d tried on Steve in the Hawkins High parking lot a month ago. “I don’t need your help.” 

“Good, ‘cause I wasn’t offering,” Steve said. 

“You wanna know a secret?” Billy was grinning again, but it wasn’t one of the hysterical laughs from before. This one was controlled, practiced. 

“No, but I get the feeling you’re gonna tell me anyways.”

“You think you’re alone because someone came in and took your happiness, but that’s a lie.” Hargrove wiped at his nose again and flicked the blood off his hand onto the cement. “If you were meant to be happy, you would be. You’re alone and– and you always will be, because you’re a fucking coward.”

Steve’s chest was hard. It was made of rock, of stone. It was crumbling in on itself. “Get the fuck out of here, Hargrove.”

“My pleasure.” Hargrove made a weird sort of tipping-his-hat motion and started off towards the tree line. 

He made it about halfway there. Steve could tell from the first couple of steps that it wasn’t going to happen, but he held out hope. Hargrove’s legs buckled right around the pool chairs, and he took one down with him as he fell, knocking it over onto its side. 

Steve dragged a hand down the side of his face. There was a lot of cursing coming from the Billy Hargrove-shaped heap on the ground, and Steve almost called it quits, walked inside, flipped the record over, went back to his chocolates and his hair and his reflection. Almost. 

He walked over to Hargrove, who was on his hands and knees, unsuccessfully trying to get his bearings. Steve decided on scooping Hargrove up under his arms and dragging him up. 

The issue, the main problem that Steve had forgotten, was that Hargrove was an asshole. Steve had barely touched him when Hargrove swung back hard with his elbow, catching Steve in the sternum. Hargrove flailed, managing to twist himself around and grab onto the lapels of Steve’s suit jacket.

“Why are you wearing this?” He looked genuinely confused.

Steve wasn’t having fun. He grabbed Hargrove by the forearms, leveraged his weight to finally get him back on his feet. Steve’s chest hurt from where the elbow had struck him. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

For some reason, that was really not the right thing to say. Steve hadn’t been trying to coddle Hargrove’s feelings or anything– Hargrove was the one who’d showed up at Steve’s house in the middle of the night and ruined his evening, after all– but he didn’t like the expression that twisted Hargrove’s features after he said that.

“You want to know? You really want to know?” Hargrove didn’t let go of Steve. Instead, he got real up in his face, growled at him. This wasn’t the Billy Hargrove of the parking lot, though, the one with his arms out all performative, yelling shit about Nancy for the whole school to hear. This was something scarier. Realer, maybe. 

Hargrove was moving forwards, which was something, because he was actually walking, except that it meant that Steve was having to move backwards. They were still all wrapped up in each other. Steve moved back, then back some more, and Hargrove seemed to be gearing up to say something– and then Steve’s foot stepped back and felt the rounded edge of the pool beneath his sneaker. 

“Woah, woah, woah,” Steve gasped, fumbling against Hargrove’s arms. “Wait, wait–!” And then Hargrove was pushing Steve out over the pool. Jesus, he was strong. Steve could feel nothingness under his feet, feet that kicked in the air, reaching to find that edge that Hargrove was standing on, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Hargrove’s face. Because if he did, he might look down, and then he’d see the water beneath him. The absolute lack of barrier between him and the depths of the pool. “Stop!” 

“Scared of a little water?” Hargrove cocked his head. 

“Put me down.” Steve wasn’t thinking. He couldn’t think, the thoughts flying up and around and away, a twister in shades of gray. Steve couldn’t think, because if he thought too hard that tornado might take him somewhere he was not at all prepared to go. So he just felt, instead. Felt– well, mostly panic. A bright, shiny fear. “Put me back, please, please, stop, please, wait–”

Hargrove was looking at him, like he was actually seeing Steve for the first time this whole crazy night. “You’re freaking out. I’m the one freaking out. Why are you freaking out?”

“Put me back and I’ll tell you,” Steve said, clinging to Hargrove’s arms. It was getting hard to breathe. Every time he tried, the air didn’t want to go in. “Hargrove. Please.” He could imagine it now: the falling, the crashing, the water, the sinking, the hands wrapped around his legs. Steve had died more times in those fitful, panicked, waking dreams than he cared to count. 

Hargrove pulled Steve back to the cement and put him down. Steve fell, all jelly-legged, to his knees, and thanked his lucky stars.

“You are so fucking weird,” Hargrove said, as if he hadn’t showed up in Steve’s yard unannounced to wreak havoc. He sat down on the ground in front of Steve, criss-cross applesauce, and ran a hand through his disheveled curls. 

Steve didn’t know how to handle seeing Billy Hargrove like this. But the sensation of completely befuddlement was one that he was long acquainted with, so he just went with it. “If you’re just gonna live here now or something, can you at least let me know if you’re seriously injured? If you die in my backyard, I’ll kill you.” 

“Let’s play a game,” Hargrove said. He was struggling with his leather jacket, taking it off. They were deep into May now, and Steve was kind of hot in his suit jacket, too, especially this close to the steam off the pool, but hell if he would do anything that Hargrove had just done. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Steve started, but Hargrove just kept on talking. For a guy that was drunk and severely bleeding, he had an extraordinary amount of energy. Steve still wasn’t sure how Hargrove had held him out over the pool, but thinking about it made all the little hairs on his neck and arms raise up, so he moved away from that line of questioning.

“Question for a question,” Hargrove said. “You get to ask a question, I get to ask a question. No lying. If you lie, I get to push you in the pool.”

“No, no pool,” Steve said quickly, and Hargrove laughed. He scrambled to justify: “You got your blood all over me, and if I get that shit in the pool my parents’ll kill me.”

Hargrove seemed to accept this, nodding sagely. Steve was having the weirdest night. “Me first,” Hargrove said. “Why are you wearing– what you’re wearing?”

Steve had the decency not to blush too hard. “I’m having a celebration. Why are you bleeding?”

“Got punched.” Hargrove grinned and did this weird thing where he licked across the top row of his teeth. Steve didn’t know what that signified. “What’re you celebrating?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “None of your business.”

“We’re playing a game!” Hargrove protested.

“All you said was we couldn’t lie. I’m not lying. It really isn’t your business.”

Hargrove reached out, bridged the space between them, and socked Steve, none too gently, on the knee.

“Ow! What the hell?”

“It’s like you don’t know how games work.” Hargrove glared at him. “I know you aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but come on, Harrington.” 

“For a guy who’s expecting me not to call the cops on him, you really are insulting me a lot.” Fuck it. It was hot. Steve took his suit jacket off. He dropped it next to Hargrove’s on the cement with a hefty sigh. 

“You talk big game, Harrington, but I have yet to see you actually live up to the whole King Steve legend.” Hargrove rolled his eyes and started patting his pockets like he was looking for something.

“Oh, are we not counting the time when I beat your ass in front of everyone?” Steve laughed, half because it was funny and half just out of incredulity. In what world was this something they just talked about? In what world did they talk, period? 

“No, we aren’t counting that.” Hargrove drew a smushed pack of cigarettes from a pocket, fumbled to draw one out. His knuckles were raw and bloody. His other hand, which had been searching his back pocket, came up empty. “Shit. Hey, you got a light?”

“For you? Nope.” Steve snorted. “Tough luck.” 

“Asshole,” Hargrove mumbled. 

“Moron.”

“Tall-haired douchebag.”

“Hey.” Steve reached up to pat at his hair. “I put work into this, you know.”

“You’re stalling.” Hargrove was just looking at him, all raised eyebrows and the faintest hint of a smile.

“Okay, alright, mullet head.” Steve raised his hands in surrender. “I was celebrating ‘cause I got a good grade. Happy?”

“I’m jumping for joy, Harrington.” 

“So, like–” Steve spread his hands placatingly. “Where does it hurt?”

Hargrove really guffawed at that. “Oh, gee, I’m not sure, Doc. I have been getting really itchy around my–”

Without thinking, and just to stop that line of conversation, Steve reached forwards and clamped a hand over Hargrove’s mouth. 

That definitely shut him up. It froze both of them, actually. Steve’s heart pounded in his chest. Was this it? Was this the moment where Hargrove remembered he hated Steve’s guts and ripped him a new one? Steve had let his guard down, had let Hargrove get too close, and now…

Billy Hargrove licked his hand. 

“What the fuck?” Steve drew it back instantly. “Oh my god, what the fuck?”

Billy shrugged. “Don’t do that.” 

“You are…” Steve stared at him, agog, aghast. “Really drunk.” 

“And you are boring.” Billy looked past Steve towards the house. “Hey, where’s Mommy and Daddy?”

“Uh, Tulsa? Tulsa.” Steve scratched at the back of his neck. This conversation was edging in on the territory of Things Steve Didn’t Talk About, Especially Not With Billy Hargrove. “You didn’t answer my question. Where’s the blood coming from, jackass?”

Billy answered for real this time. A bit of that manic energy seemed to have drained out of him while he was looking at the house. “Nose, mostly.” He reached up and poked at it. “Ow. Yeah. Probably broken. Think that’s the only one that’s bleeding.” 

Steve was mildly concerned, and then majorly concerned about himself for being concerned about notorious dickhead Billy Hargrove. “Look, I have a first aid kit inside. If I go get it, will you stay here?”

Billy didn’t respond, but that wasn’t a no. Steve figured it was the best he was gonna get, and pushed himself to his feet, picking up his suit jacket as he went. “Just stay here,” he repeated. “I’ll be right back.”

Inside the house, at the top of the upstairs landing, Steve took a second to just breathe. He sat himself down on the top step and put his head down in his hands, unable to amass enough energy to care about messing up his hair, and did a five-count in, five-count out. It should have been easy. It wasn’t. The out was all hitching and shaky. 

Steve didn’t know what he was so scared of. Didn’t know what was wrong with him. It made some sense to be scared of Billy– of course, he should be, the guy had a reputation and Steve had felt it first-hand, crashing across his face. But also, if he’d been that scared, he could’ve just walked away. Crazy as the guy might be, Steve didn’t think Billy would go so far as to actually smash his way into the house. 

Well, maybe. Steve wasn’t 100% sure about that. But, like, probably not.  But Steve hadn’t fought, hadn’t left. Even after Billy had held him out over the pool, that moment of building panic and sparrow wings flapping, flapping, flapping in Steve’s chest, making it damn hard to breathe– even after that, Steve had just sat with him. Had answered his questions. Had played his game. 

Steve couldn’t tell what was worse: if he was really that stupid, or if he was just too lonely to care. 

The thing was, it hadn’t been a horrible conversation. The last part, that was, after Billy stopped insulting him. Steve might have actually cracked a genuine smile at one point. He thought of Nancy, Nancy with her big eyes and her twisting little smile. He remembered the last time he’d had fun with her.

“I’m thinking of a color,” he’d said. They had been in his room, alone in the house for the weekend. Her mom wouldn’t let her sleep over, of course, but they spent the days in a blissful haze of movies and kissing and snowball fights and more kissing. This had been early January, what Steve considered the last of the good times. 

Nancy had smiled and shaken her head. She was always shaking her head at him. “Come on, Steve, not again.”

“No, please, please, it’s gonna work.” He’d reached out across the bed for her hands and took them in his own. They were so small, and graceful. He always thought that Nancy could be a hand model. But she was really into the whole reporter thing, and that was cool, too. “Here. I heard physical contact helps.”

“Oh, you heard.” She’d rolled her eyes, not unkindly, and then dutifully closed them. “Okay, okay. A color?”

“A color.” 

“Alright. Uh… blue?” She cracked one eye open to look at him.

“Yes!” Steve could remember how excited he’d been. He’d bounced up and down on the bed, not caring if it broke. If they went crashing down, they’d do it together. “You did it! You’re amazing, Nance!”

Nancy had laughed. “It’s your favorite color. I guessed.”

“No, you definitely have ESP. Like, definitely.” Steve had nodded sagely. He hadn’t let go of her hands. Maybe, if he’d just held her there like that forever, everything would’ve turned out okay. He felt like a tree, a forest, the whole goodman planet Earth, stretching up to bask in her sunlight smile. 

“You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington,” she’d said, and smiled. And she had been right.

There was a creaking noise, and Steve opened his eyes. Billy Hargrove was at the bottom of the stairs, blinking up at him. 

Steve had a bite-sized heart attack. “Jesus, did I not say to stay put? God, Hargrove, I know you’re really into being contrary, and that it’s part of your whole image or whatever, but you really just had one job. Can you not just do one thing?” Billy didn’t reply, just looked up at him. Steven dragged a hand down his face. “What? What?”

“It’s raining,” Billy said. 

“Oh.” 

“I’m gonna go.” Billy turned and walked away.

Steve watched him disappear around the corner. This was fine. This was easier. He’d wanted Billy out, anyways. He waited about the length of a five-count in, and then broke. 

“Wait, wait! Jesus, wait.” Steve chased after him, taking the stairs three at a time and sliding around the corner. Billy was halfway across the living room, looking entirely out of place on the white carpet– aw, jeez, the carpet– and silhouetted by the frame of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. But he’d paused, was just standing there, with his back to Steve. “Wait,” Steve repeated. “Just– wait, okay?”

Billy half-turned. “For what?” He was wearing a new expression. Steve catalogued it, added it to his little index of confusing faces that Billy Hargrove had made at him.

“For– stay here.” 

Genuine surprise registered on Billy’s face. He looked just about as surprised as Steve felt. “What?”

Well, he’d said it, hadn’t he? Couldn’t take it back now, even if he wanted to. Which he maybe did? Maybe didn’t? Steve decided not to open that can of worms just yet, not with his words still hanging in the air between them. He’d already dug himself into a weird, weird hole. Why not just shovel the dirt in on top of himself? 

“Stay here,” Steve said, sounding much more confident about the idea than he felt. “You’re still definitely too drunk to drive home, and I’m pretty sure letting you walk around in the rain in the middle of the night would be a dick move on my part. However much of an insufferable ass you are, I don’t need your untimely death on my hands.” 

Billy narrowed his eyes at Steve, all mean and weird, like Steve wasn’t totally doing him a solid. “Who says I want to stay in your ugly house?”

“Awesome house,” Steve corrected him.

“Sure, if you’re Udo Kier.” Billy snorted. 

Steve frowned. “Who?” He always felt like he was playing catchup with Billy. He didn’t love the sensation.

“Suspiria? Andy Warhol’s Dracula?” Billy put his hands on his hips. “Rich pervert weirdo.” 

“I’m not a pervert,” Steve said.

“So you admit to the weirdo part.” Billy’s face lit up. He looked triumphant. Steve couldn’t help but be relieved; he liked this way better than whatever that look from earlier had been. This Billy, the competitive one, the one insulting Steve and smiling the whole way through, was familiar. 

“Ground rules. Number one.” Steve held his fingers up, ticking them off as he went. “No blood on the carpet. Number two, no stealing things? Don’t know if I have to say that, but, yeah. Don’t steal my shit. Number three, no breaking things.”

“Really taking away my options here.” Billy seemed to hardly be listening. He’d turned away from Steve and was walking around the living room looking at stuff. He squatted down to run his fingers across the sleeves of Steve’s record collection. 

“No touching!” Steve moved forwards, began assessing the room from the perspective of a new mother. What were the breakables? What might Billy stick in his mouth and accidentally swallow? Steve made a move for the chocolates, but Billy got there first.

“Someone’s really trying to impress you.” Billy popped a chocolate caramel in his mouth. “Wheeler finally wise up?”

“Number four, no talking about Nancy,” Steve added.

“Not from Wheeler, then.” Billy grabbed for another chocolate, but Steve slapped his hand away in time. “Ow.” 

And it went on like that. Billy made fun of Steve’s music– “Phil Collins? Jesus, Harrington–” and tried on his Ray-Bans– “I’m on a mission from God”– and sprawled out on Steve’s couch. Steve eventually remembered about the first-aid kit and fetched it like a good host. He remembered patching up Tommy’s hand during a New Year’s Party after Tommy had sliced it open on a broken beer bottle. 

He didn’t dare try to help Billy himself like he had Tommy. He tossed the kit on the couch next to Billy, who seemed to know his way around it even better than Steve. Steve was mildly mortified to watch Billy crack his nose back into place on the couch like it was the most casual thing in the world, like he’d done it a million times. Had he? Steve squinted at Billy’s nose. It looked so perfect. 

“I– we have a guest room,” Steve said, gesturing up the stairs, but Billy had made himself nice and comfortable on the couch and waved him off. Steve was quietly relieved. Having Billy down here, on the couch, in his house, was bad enough. Having him upstairs, though? Two doors down from Steve’s room, sleeping in the guest bed like he was, well, a guest? A sudden chill passed down Steve’s spine. Too far. Too much. Too real. “‘Kay, well. I’ll at least get you a blanket from the linen closet.” Steve gestured up the stairs. Billy didn’t respond, just laid there looking at him. “And. I’m assuming wherever you left your car is close to here? So I’ll set my alarm for, like, 6:30 instead of 7:00, and we can go get it. Cool?”

Billy flashed him the A-OK symbol, and Steve backed out of the room, headed upstairs for the linens. He was loath to leave Billy down there, although he wasn’t really sure what he thought was gonna happen. It all just felt so wrong, crazy, out of place.

Steve bundled a blanket in his arms and leaned his head against the linen closet door. 

Nancy’s voice in his ear: “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

“Yeah,” Steve whispered, and knocked his head lightly against the wall. Thump. Thump. He was an idiot. Except, this night had weirdly been not that bad. Not what he was expecting, not in any universe, but– not awful. He tried not to think about school tomorrow, or the many unanswered questions he hadn’t gotten to before they’d abandoned their game– who hit you? Why? Where’s your car? Why did you come here? Why did you stay? Why didn’t you drop me in that pool to drown? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with me?– no, no, those were all the things he absolutely did not think of. 

He hugged the fluffy blanket to his chest. So he was an idiot. So what?

Steve tromped down the stairs, took them one by one. “Okay,” he said, rounding the corner, “I know it’s purple, but it’s the best blanket I could find…” 

Billy Hargrove was asleep on the couch. 

Like this, he almost looked like a normal boy. A blood-stained, fucked-up, normal boy with bruises up his arms and really long eyelashes. 

Steve wondered when he’d started thinking of Hargrove as “Billy”. Maybe sometime around when Billy had licked his hand. Kind of hard to keep that kind of respect for someone once their spit’s gone inbetween your fingers. 

Steve was sure Billy would beat that respect back into him at some point. Would remind him that this had just been a night, a weird night, and that when they were sober they hated each other and never talked like this. 

Still. Looking at Billy asleep on that couch, face relaxed, curls fanned out, like he didn’t have a care in the world, Steve was pretty sure he could never go back to calling him Hargrove.


	7. Disengage

Billy’s arm hurt. He looked down, and it was Sid, Sid with his tattoo gun, gripping Billy’s right arm tight and laying down a line of ink. 

“Ow,” Billy said, wincing as Sid filled in the little eye socket of the skull. 

“Shush. And hold still.”

Billy shushed, and he held still, so that Sid could concentrate again. He loved to watch Sid concentrate. Sid did this adorable little thing where he stuck the tip of his tongue out of his mouth and furrowed his brow intensely. Billy was a mess. 

Billy was sitting on the hood of the Camaro, Sid standing between his legs with the tattoo gun. It was a warm February afternoon, and Billy hated his dad, and Sid had a tattoo gun. 

“There,” Sid said, stepping back to admire his work for a second. A skull with a cigarette sat on Billy’s upper arm, smoke drifting up in little curlicues. Billy loved it. He loved more than he’d care to admit. 

“You’re amazing,” Billy said, expecting Sid to roll his eyes, smile, maybe poke at him a little and tell him he was being a sap. 

Instead, Sid said, “You left me,” and everything crumbled. 

It wasn’t daytime anymore, it was the night, it was that night, and Neil was holding Billy out over the edge of the hill, growling into his ear with hot breath: “This was your fresh start.” 

Billy woke up, and he had no idea where he was.

Plush couch. Fluffy purple blanket draped across him. Stiff bones, stiff clothes, aches across his body. His arm hurt, but not from the months-old tattoo. No, this was the familiar aftermath of a fight. It was starting to come back to him now, in bits and pieces. The night, the fight, the pool.

Dawn was just breaking out the floor-to-ceiling windows of the strange living room. Billy looked to his left; sitting on a glass coffee table was a folded pile of clothes with a little note on top. He reached out for it, a groan escaping his lips as he rolled onto his bad side. Not that he really had a good side. 

“Thought you might want these. Steve.” 

Steve.

Oh. Steve. Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington’s pool, Steve Harrington’s house, Steve Harrington’s stupid hair and big puppy-dog eyes.

Fuck. Billy crumpled the note in his fist and disregarded the neatly folded stack of sweatpants and sweater and socks that Steve had, apparently, laid out for him. He threw the blanket to the ground. Judging by the light and the silence pervading the house, it was not yet wake-up time for the Harrington household. Good. 

Billy patted his pockets: keys, check. Pack of Marlboro Reds, check. Lighter? Gone. He vaguely remembered realizing this sometime last night, outside with Steve. Steve. Fuck. 

No time to waste. He staggered to his feet, ignoring the pulsing pain in his hip, his side, his face, his everywhere. The beginnings of a headache, and he couldn’t tell if it was from his nose or the hangover. The pain was familiar. Billy thought of home. Home, with the 11:00 curfew he’d missed by about seven hours, with the quick little reminders that hurt more than Tommy Hagan’s fists ever could. This next reminder wouldn’t be quick. The best thing about Billy’s dad was that he always, always made time for him. 

Billy was crawling, scratching, tearing his way out of his own skin, only he was stuck. Couldn’t get out. What he could get out of was this house. 

He left through the back, picking up his leather jacket on the way out. Steve had brought it in at some point, apparently, and set it on a towel to dry near the sliding door. Billy didn’t know how long it had been out there, soaking up the rain. It was probably ruined. Fucking stupid. 

Once he was outside, he could breathe a little better, but there was still this loud rushing noise in his ears, like the ocean at its wildest, the ocean that had nearly drowned him when he was seven. He’d been learning to surf with his mom, gone out too far, the old story everyone had. He’d gone under, and for a few short seconds that he could still remember vividly, he was absolutely sure he was going to die. That was it. The water was taking him. 

Then his mom had come and scooped him up and he’d coughed the water back out and everything had been okay. 

Billy had wanted to go right back in, but his mom hadn’t let him. Had told him that was enough for the day. What did she know? What right did she have to rush him away from the water’s edge, back to his house? To leave him there? The water had almost drowned him, sure, but it had been exhilarating. The struggle, the choking, the certainty that came in those moments before rescue. And at least the water had wanted him. 

Billy could hear the raging of it now, under his footsteps as they tread across cement, into the trees. He could vaguely remember the direction he’d come from last night. But how long had he been walking? Had he turned? Would he even have realized if he had? 

By the time he found Tina’s house, dawn had gone ahead and broke. This is why nobody partied on Thursdays. He wished that Tommy had never listened to him, that Tina’s parents hadn’t fucked off to Costa Rica, that Steve Harrington had never opened that door. He was too rich. Billy had never been allowed to be that much of an idiot. Wouldn’t have survived a week. Steve had opened his door with that stupid-looking bat– Billy remembered laughing and laughing at the sight of pretty-boy Harrington holding that bat with his grip all wrong, frowning out into the night– but then he’d put it down so quickly. So easy to drop it, to drop everything, to get in arm’s reach. 

Billy remembered holding Steve out over the pool. It hadn’t been a joke and it hadn’t been a challenge, either. He’d wanted to hit Steve, or maybe drop him, or maybe let Steve grab him and pull him down too, into the comfort of the water. Except then Steve had said “please”, all scared like that, and it hadn’t tasted so sweet.

Billy was in big trouble. 

The camaro was untouched, thank god. There were still a couple other cars outside the house, and the front yard was a complete mess, bottles and cans strewn across the lawn. Someone had thrown up on the curb. Billy hoped it was Tommy. 

He didn’t know what to think about that whole thing. It had been so stupid. Billy had wanted a fight, obviously. He wasn’t really upset about the aftermath. This was easy enough to deal with. The hangover was actually the more annoying part. But he also hadn’t expected Tommy to go that hard. Or to– care? It was like this thing he’d used to do with the boys in school, back in Cali. He’d push, prod, figure out their buttons and jam the big red one. And they’d fight a little, Billy’d sock someone in the face, maybe go a little easy if he wanted bruises to show for it. Bruises to cover up the other bruises. 

It had started like that last night. The second he’d started drinking, he’d known how that would end with Neil. So he gets in a fight, everyone sees it, it all adds up the next morning. Except he was usually supposed to win those fights. And the person who he was fighting didn’t have to like it, but they were at least supposed to understand the game. 

Steve hadn’t played along, either, but Steve was a different breed. Billy had gotten that. They were allowed to play a different kind of game, a more dangerous one. Tommy, though– Tommy was supposed to take it. Was supposed to back Billy up. Wasn’t supposed to get his feelings hurt. 

The thing was, Billy didn’t have buttons. He didn’t have a big red self-destruct button to smash. He couldn’t afford to. No, Billy was under control, always; even when he was unhinged, it was because he’d decided to be. People pissed him off, but nobody made Billy do something that Billy didn’t, deep down, already want to do. Billy was very strict with himself on that point. 

But then Tommy had taken things personally, and Billy had maybe kinda sorta not fought back as hard as he could’ve for reasons that he refused to think about in the daylight, and then he’d wound up at the worst possible house. 

Well, second worst. Billy still had no idea how to go home. Maybe he’d just skip town. Leave the country. Go hook up with Tina’s mom in Costa Rica. 

He realized he was still wearing a blood and punch-stained tee. Not exactly school-appropriate attire. He wasn’t sure the level of shambles his reputation was in, but showing up like this wouldn’t help. He could have taken the clothes Steve had left out. But there was a line, and Billy had already come too close to crossing it.

He would never talk to Steve again. That was the obvious solution. Pretend last night had never happened, forget all about it, go back to bothering Steve on the court and nothing more. Maybe not even that; that had been so infuriatingly self-indulgent that it worked Billy up just to think about it. Crowding Steve on the court, skin accidentally glancing against skin every so often, whispering mean little nothings, watching the way Steve’s ears burned red when he was mad. 

It should be easy enough. To pretend. To disengage. If one thing had been abundantly clear last night, it was that Steve hadn’t wanted him there. He could remember when it had started to rain, last night. He’d been looking up at the stars, thinking about how many more he could see here in Hawkins than back home. He knew, in the rational part of his brain, that it was because there was less pollution because nothing big or interesting or worthwhile existed in Hawkins, but the stupid drunk sappy part of his brain, the part that was waiting for Steve Harrington to come back with a first aid kit and make it all better, was just marveling at how goddamn gorgeous the sky looked. 

And then the clouds had rolled in, curiously quick, and blocked out the stars and the waxing moon. The first drop had come right in the middle of Billy’s forehead. They started peppering the pool, the pool that Billy wanted so desperately to slide into. He didn’t, because he had seen that weird, inexplicable fear in Steve’s eyes when he’d held him out over it, and the thought of letting Steve find him floating in that pool made him angry in the wrong way. Steve Harrington was weird and inexplicable so much of the time. Billy didn’t know how to deal with it. 

So he’d gone inside, against all his better judgements, and he’d walked through Steve’s picture-perfect house, feeling ugly. It was a really nice house. Billy hated it. He shuffled, both the cat and the thing it was dragging in, around the corner, and found Steve sitting at the top of the staircase, eyes closed, face buried in his hands. 

Billy wanted to say something to him. He didn’t know what. Maybe he wanted to ask why Steve was scared of the pool. It’s not a bad thing, he wanted to tell him. The water. The falling. Even the drowning– that was the exciting part. He wanted to make Steve understand. Eli’s voice in his head: “It feels kind of nice.” Billy wanted Steve to run with him.

And then Steve had opened his eyes and looked at Billy and there had been this profound sense of frustration on his face. Not frustration at anything Billy had done, just at his general existence. And Steve had snapped at him about staying put and asked, “Can you not just do one thing?” and made it very clear just how distasteful the sight of Billy standing in his house was. And Billy felt ugly and stupid and crazier than he ever had, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something different. 

Billy ended up driving back to his house. He knew his dad’s schedule by heart, and waited parked around the corner until he could hear his dad’s truck rattle on out of there. Only then did he pull up in the driveway, cut the engine, and brave the belly of his house. 

Neither Susan or Neil were there, he knew that much– Neil always dropped Susan off at her job at Starcourt on the way to work– but as soon as he stepped in he could just smell the rank scent of disappointment and simmering anger in the air. 

Max. She sat on the couch, arms crossed, all dressed and ready for school, backpack between her feet. She didn’t look up when he came in, but Billy knew better than to think he could make it all the way to his room without her mouthing off. 

“You were out all night,” she said, glowering at the floor. Then, when he didn’t respond: “Mom and Neil were worried.”

Out of all the emotions sparked in the Hargrove household by Billy’s absence, Billy doubted very much that concern for his well being was high on the list. “Did you rat me out this time?” 

“Screw you,” Max spat, and rose from her seat. “I’ll skateboard to school.”

“Okay, yeah, have fun with that, dweeb.” Billy brushed past her into his room and slammed the door behind him. Fuck Max and her fairweather sisterhood. Fuck her worry. He knew where her worry got him. And fuck her happy little pancake noises. He didn’t need them. 

Billy stripped off, washed quickly with a washcloth. Wished he had time for a shower. He got the dried blood off, prodded at the developing bruises across his chest, mostly on the left side. Winced a little as he looked at his nose. He’d pushed it back into place okay. Hadn’t been the first time. He remembered Steve’s eyes when he’d done that, when it had made that small crack as it realigned. They’d been so wide. Like King Steve had never seen real action before. 

Billy thought about the rumors that Jonathan Byers had kicked Steve’s ass in November and grit his teeth. Cracked his knuckles. They were split, too. God, school was going to suck. 

He settled on a plain black tee and the jean jacket. Keep it simple. Classy. He thought of Steve’s stupid Ray-Bans and grabbed a pair of cheap aviators off his dresser. He checked himself in the mirror. His hair looked like shit. The bruises on his cheek bled out from under the shades, and there was no hiding his state of his hands. He brushed his teeth, gargled a little mouthwash, sprayed some Drakkar Noir on his neck. 

When he emerged, school bag in hand, Max was gone. Little shit. She’d actually done it.

Billy was already having the kind of morning that he was actively trying to forget as it happened, and this level of fuckery was not going to fly. He raged out the door, got in the Camaro, and stepped on the gas. 

She’d made it about half a mile out. Billy would have been impressed if he wasn’t so pissed. He rolled down the window and hung his head out, slowing the car’s rol to a crawl.

“Get in the car.”

Max didn’t respond, didn’t look at him, just gave herself another push on that stupid skateboard. 

“Get in the car, Maxine,” Billy growled.

“I’m not getting in a car with you,” Max yelled. “You’re crazy.”

“Get in the car or I’ll run you over.”

“Not sounding less crazy!”

“You’re gonna be late. I won’t be late, and you will, and the school will call home. You want that?”

“I’ll tell them it’s your fault,” she shot back, “for telling me to skate to school.”

Billy was actually going to kill her. He could run her over, that was a legitimate solution. “Max, I do not have time–”

“Where were you last night, anyways?” She was sort of looking at him now, and that was a step up, even though the look was more of a glare and she was still pushing herself as fast as she could. 

“I told you I was going to a party,” Billy said. “Stayed the night with a– friend.”

“You don’t have friends,” Max said, and she wasn’t wrong, but he contractually had to kick her ass for that. “Was your friend the one that beat you up?”

“What, this old thing?” He poked at his nose, pretended like it didn’t hurt. “Got drunk. Fell down the stairs.” He hung his arm out the car window and waved for her. “I’m serious, get in. You wanna see your little nerd friends, right?”

“They have names,” Max said, but he could tell he was winning her over. 

“And the soviets are boycotting the Olympics,” Billy said. “You know, while we’re naming things that I don’t give a shit about.” He was still just the tiniest bitter that they’d moved away a whole three months before L.A. was going to host the summer Olympics. 

“Are you at all capable of not being a dick for two seconds?” 

“Language,” he said, and she snorted a little, and, like, that was fair. 

She slowed a bit, and Billy got the cue. Rolled the car to a stop beside her. She was pretending like she was making her mind up about something, but Billy clocked the heave of her chest and was pretty sure she was just getting tired. 

“I’ll get in,” Max said, “but you owe me favor.”

“Do I, now?” Billy smirked.

“Yeah. And I don’t know what it is yet. But I’m gonna ask you for a favor someday, and you’ll have to do it,” Max said with a solemn air. 

As long as he got her in the car now, it didn’t really matter. Billy could blow off a favor later, if he really didn’t want to do it, and she’d be mad, and he’d be mad, but that was pretty much a typical Monday. “Sure,” Billy said. “Deal.” 

It was only once he got in her the car that Billy had the wherewithal to be concerned about school. Last night had been messy, and while Billy usually thrived on messy, usually he wasn’t the one on the ground at the end with a broken nose. He couldn’t really remember some of that. How it ended. How long it had gone on. It was hard to gauge the repercussions when half of what he’d said was just TV static now. He did remember a couple of the things he’d said to Tommy, and he certainly remembered what Tommy had said to him. That much was a problem.

He dropped Max off– she ran off without so much as a thank you– and made it to the high school only about forty-five minutes late. It sort of worked in his benefit. It meant that he could wait in the stairwell until his next class, slip in the back, avoid any kind of public spectacle until lunch. 

When he entered the cafeteria, though, there was no escaping it. Billy walked in, and he watched people watching him. A thought cut through, Sid’s voice: “You know, you care entirely too much what people think of you.” Here, in the cafeteria, with the entire teenage population of Hawkins, Indiana staring at him, Billy was pretty sure he cared the appropriate amount. 

“Billy boy!” Tommy stood at his table, breaking the tension. He waved Billy over, and Billy warily approached. Tommy had a black eye, but he was smiling around it. “Damn, you look about as bad as my head feels. That was some shit last night, huh?” And he reached out an arm across the table for one of those weird guy clasps, and Billy took it, and every other person in the cafeteria seemed to relax. 

So maybe Tommy was smarter than he looked. 

“Maybe you Indiana hicks do know how to throw a party, after all.” Billy made himself grin, like getting plastered and beating each other into the ground was just a normal thing in California. “Fuckin’ gnarly.”

He didn’t know if everyone genuinely bought it, or if they just wanted so badly for things to be normal that they accepted this anyways. At the very least, it was plain to see the relief on the faces of Tommy and Carol and the cohort. Billy wondered what they’d been expecting. That he’d come in here looking for a rematch? Tear into Tommy in the middle of the school day? Maybe Billy would’ve, in another world. A world where he hadn’t spent the night on Steve Harrington’s couch. 

Steve. Billy’s eyes shot out, looking around for him. Harrington didn’t usually eat lunch in here– Billy didn’t know where he went, maybe out to some cutesy Indiana diner? He wouldn’t be surprised. But no, of course, today of all days Steve had decided to join the peons in the cafeteria. He was sitting alone at the end of a table, and when Billy looked over Steve was staring right back at him.

Billy blinked. Steve smiled. Billy looked away. 

“Where’d you go off to last night, anyways?” Carol asked. 

“Walked home. Way too drunk.” Billy shoveled food in his mouth in the hopes that this would stave off more questions. They had no idea where he lived. It made more sense than what had really happened.

Tommy got sort of quiet, sort of serious, and leaned over towards Billy. “Hey, I just wanted you to know that I didn’t– I mean, nobody thinks you’re a–”

Billy reached out and flicked Tommy in the forehead, lightly, just to shut him up. “I know that. Don’t be a pussy.”

Things were mostly fine, after that, except that Billy could feel Steve’s eyes boring into his back the entire time. By the end of lunch, he had had enough of it. He passed by Steve’s table on his way to take his tray up, and the idiot had the gall to speak first. 

“Hey, Billy–”

“Am I a billboard?”

“I– what?” Steve’s eyebrows pushed up and together and Billy couldn’t do this, couldn’t do this.

“I asked you if you thought I was a billboard, Harrington.” Billy put his tray down and leaned in. 

“No?” 

“Or a television set?”

“I don’t know what–”

“I’m just trying to figure out why you’ve been staring at me.”

Steve went real red and real quiet. 

“That’s what I thought,” Billy sneered, trying to pour as much venom in it as possible. “You keep your eyes to your fucking self. Unless you got some kind of a problem?” 

Billy hated himself, really really despised himself, for how much he wanted Steve to push back. To say yes, I have a problem, and to let Billy feel it. To show Billy just how much of a problem he was. He could remember Steve’s frustrated expression at the top of those stairs, snapping: “Can you not just do one thing?” Billy wanted that fire now, that disappointment, anything except what Steve was giving him: these puppy dog eyes and the confused, almost hurt expression. 

“Nope,” Steve said quietly. “No problem here.”

“Good,” Billy said, and walked away. He was so fucking ugly. 

He played shirts in basketball that day. Maybe the universe wasn’t out to get him. Still, every little movement hurt. He felt creaky. He pushed through it, dribbling hard and stretching up until his side ache. He didn’t crowd Steve, didn’t even look at him. Pretended Steve Harrington was just another hick nobody that wasn’t worth a second of his time.

Because here was the thing. Steve was a pretty boy. He was the kind of boy who did his hair up real big and perfect, who chewed the tip of his pen when he was concentrating, who drove a BMW and freaked out when he got near his own swimming pool. Steve couldn’t handle a tattoo gun. Steve couldn’t handle a rough kiss on a car hood in the strangeness of twilight. Steve couldn’t handle Neil’s boot on his chest. 

That image alone was enough to bolster Billy throughout basketball. He cold-shouldered Steve harder than he’d ever cold-shouldered anyone, and while it didn’t feel good, per say, all he had to do was think about going home after and finding his dad waiting for him and all that was inevitably going to entail, and blowing Steve off came a little easier. 

Because, when it came down to it, Steve absolutely could not handle Billy Hargrove. Billy with the bruises; with the rage; with the weak, unlovable heart. Steve couldn’t handle it, and he really shouldn’t have to.


	8. The Temple of Doom

It was third grade, and Steve was eight years old. He and Tommy had been playing over by Sattler Quarry, because Tommy’s mom had said they weren’t allowed to and they wholeheartedly took that as a challenge. It was near about a two hundred foot drop from the top of the quarry to the water, and Mrs. Hagan had said the water itself was at least as deep. Steve and Tommy had each dared the other to get closer to the edge. 

Steve had chickened out first. Tommy had gone right up to the edge and reported back: “The water’s mighty blue.” 

“Don’t– Tommy, no. Come back.” Steve had reached out his hand for Tommy, staying a healthy two yards from the edge. 

“What, are you scared?” Tommy waggled his eyebrows, and Steve rolled his eyes. These were customary expressions for the both of them, one of those Abbott and Costello routines where they go in circles and circles and end up right back where they started. 

“It’s just gonna suck for me if you die,” Steve said. “Your mom’s gonna think it’s my fault.”

“Then don’t let me die.” Tommy took a step closer to the edge, and waved his arms around like he was losing his balance. Steve tried to pretend like that didn’t really freak him out, just shook his head. 

But then Tommy really did step wrong; he was walking backwards so he could make faces at Steve, and his left ankle rolled on a stray rock near the edge of the ledge, and he started pinwheeling his arms and going bug-eyed. He didn’t yell out, just had this sharp high-pitched gasp in, and that’s how Steve knew it was real. 

Steve moved forward without thinking. It was this crazy thing, one that he’d credited ever since to “amazing reflexes, just the best, Nance, like a ninja”– or to some deep ancestral instinct. Maybe the Harringtons of yore back in medieval England or whatever had been rock climbers.

Either way– it just happened. Steve’s arm was grabbing Tommy’s forearm, and for one of the longest seconds in Steve’s life he and Tommy just stared at each other, looking about equally surprised at this turn of events. And then Tommy was tumbling forwards onto Steve and they were falling all on top of each other, and Steve was extricating himself and crab-walking backwards as fast as possible away from that cliff’s edge. 

“Jeez louise!” Steve panted, his heart beating so loud and panicked that he had to actually put his hand on his chest to try and still the pounding, to try and push his heart back in the cage between his ribs where it belonged.

“You got me,” Tommy said. “Steve, you didn’t let me die.” 

“Don’t you ever–” Steve jabbed a finger into Tommy’s chest, hard– “ever–” he was so angry he was shaking– “do something that stupid again.” 

“Okay,” Tommy had said, eyes wide as platters, and Steve could tell that he meant it. But Steve also had this dreadful voice whispering in the back of his head that told him that Tommy would, Tommy was reckless like that, and that Steve had better be around to catch him.

Steve had been the one that had walked away that day outside the gas station, but Tommy had been the one that had broken things. Or maybe things had just gotten fractured more and more, little by little, throughout the years. Too much pressure on such brittle bones. Something was bound to break. 

But Steve refused to believe that it had always been bad. Nancy had suggested as much, one night in December when Steve had crawled through her window all shaky and fragile and needing something to grab onto. 

“They were never really your friends,” Nancy had murmured, threading her hands through his hair. She always mussed it up something awful, but he let her do it anyway. “Real friends are nice to you, Steve. They care about you.”

But she hadn’t been there at the quarry that day. Didn’t know what it felt like to have been a tether, to have been the only thing standing between a boy and the two hundred foot drop beneath him. If Tommy wasn’t his friend, what was he? 

This is what Steve thought of when he saw Tommy’s face. This is what Steve dwelled on, instead of the arctic-tier cold shoulder that Billy was giving him. 

Somehow, Steve hadn’t expected to be ignored. He should have; he had plenty of experience. But he had expected– well, he wasn’t sure what, really. A thank you? He’d come downstairs in the morning, after being awoken by the alarm he’d set especially early so that he could go drive Billy around the neighborhood in search of that stupid Camaro. The only signs that Billy had ever been there were the blood stains on the cement outside, the fluffy purple blanket on the living room floor, and the empty space where a chocolate caramel had once been. 

After that, Steve had been plenty prepared for blowback. One of the famous Billy Hargrove rages. He’d taken his lunch in the cafeteria instead of the stairwell, out of what he could only diagnose as a morbid fascination with the impending explosion that was Billy Hargrove, and when he’d seen Billy going out of his way to pass by Steve’s table, Steve was half convinced he was about to get murdered. For what? For daring to shelter a drunk idiot? 

But then he realized what was going on, a solution so simple he felt stupid he hadn’t considered it himself: Billy was simply going to pretend that nothing had happened.

Or, more accurately, Billy was going to pretend like Steve didn’t even exist. It was a familiar sensation, but one that he hadn’t been subjected to from Billy before. After lunch, there was no crowding on the basketball court, no snide comments in the halls, no response of any kind. Steve almost wanted to push. Just to see what it would take for Billy to acknowledge his presence. 

Steve didn’t push. He neither wanted nor needed anything from Billy Hargrove. He refocused on Tommy, thoughts of Tommy, remnants of what was once a friendship with Tommy.

Steve found Tommy in the locker room after practice. It was a rare quiet moment, Tommy toweling off his hair post-shower in only a pair of jeans, torso mottled with bruises. It was moments like this, where Tommy wasn’t trying to impress anyone or make anyone laugh or jump off any cliffs, that Steve remembered why they’d stayed friends so long.

“Hey,” Steve said. He hated to break the moment, but he also hadn’t spoken to a single person since the weird thing with Billy at lunch, and he was hungry for someone who knew him. 

Tommy’s eyes shifted over, flicked up and down Steve. He tensed a little. It was subtle, but Steve knew all of Tommy’s tells. “What do you want?”

“Just…” Steve gestured to Tommy’s general state of disarray, because he didn’t have a better answer. Steve never had been good at knowing what he wanted. 

Tommy pulled a shirt on, tugged at the bottom nervously. “Missed a wicked party last night.”

“Didn’t know I was invited,” Steve said. A mild jab, just to test the waters. Tommy didn’t laugh. Steve tried again: “You look worse than I did after Byers got me.”

“Thanks.” Tommy put his towel down, opened his locker, started grabbing his things. 

“I was thinking about the quarry,” Steve blurted out.

Tommy looked up at him sharply. “What?”

“When we were kids.”

“I remember.” It was cold. There was nothing of that panicked, dangerous, necessary trust that they’d held between them when they’d been eight and Steve had saved Tommy’s life.

“How’s Carol?”

“Cut the crap, Harrington.” Tommy slammed his locker shut. “We aren’t friends.”

And sure, Steve knew that, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. The “Harrington” part hurt especially. They’d never done that last-name thing before. “And you’re friends with Hargrove?”

“Sure.” Tommy shrugged. “He knows how to hang.”

“Is that what that is?” Steve looked pointedly at the black eye filling in Tommy’s right socket. “Hanging?”

Tommy advanced on Steve. Steve held his ground. He couldn’t tell yet which one of them was the cliff and which one was the boy falling off. “I don’t know what your deal is,” Tommy said, “but don’t you make it my problem. Your shit isn’t my shit to have to care about anymore. That’s the deal. You made that deal five months ago when you walked out on us, so don’t come in here talking about the quarry and thinking that things are all normal. I don’t give a shit if you’re weird and lonely or if your loser girlfriend was mean to you. It isn’t my problem anymore.” 

“Nancy isn’t a loser,” Steve said, entirely without thinking. Stupid goddamn medieval Harrington instincts.

Tommy snorted. “Right. Yeah. See you around, Harrington.” He brushed past Steve and out of the locker room. 

Steve thought about Nancy and felt stupid. He thought about his mom and dad in Tulsa and felt weird and lonely. He thought about Billy and felt absolutely nothing. Because who the hell was Billy Hargrove to make him feel anything at all?

Steve went home and cleaned the blood off the cement around the pool and thanked god for late spring sunsets, because the glimmer of the water wasn’t quite so scary by daylight. He took a shower and had a quiet night in and was alone. 

Steve didn’t dream at all, and when he woke up to a late Saturday morning he felt a strange sense of loss. 

It was a beautiful day. Steve was pretty sure that, if he let himself, he could go back to bed and sleep right through it. Maybe he would dream of the stags again. He’d like that.

But no. No, no. That was pathetic. That was something that people who were unhappy did. Billy’s voice swam into his head, calling him “weird” and “boring”. Hell if Steve would prove him right. 

So he dragged himself out of bed, put in the effort to get his hair just right– four puffs of the Farrah Fawcett spray, the whole shebang– and headed over to The Hawk. 

He’d only gone to the movie theater once since the Nancy incident. It hadn’t seemed quite right to take her on a date to the place where he’d dubbed her “Nancy ‘The Slut’ Wheeler” in big red letters. This was back when he was still scared of being broken up with. Now that it had happened, Steve could confirm– it was really just the worst. But walking on eggshells to avoid any provocation of a fight, because he knew any fight might be the last one, wasn’t great either. There was a lot with Nancy that looked uglier in retrospect. Not her face, though. Not her beautiful mind. 

The Hawk was playing some movie with a long title. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Steve was pretty sure that it was the sequel to something, but he hadn’t seen the first one because he’d been fourteen and it had been the middle of June and he hadn’t been a freaking dork. 

Seventeen year old Steve was kind of a dork. Maybe. Not, like, Jonathan-dorky. He wasn’t “artsy” or anything. God forbid. But he had been into that last Star Wars flick when it came out, and he had bought this comic on a whim during one of his intense February depressive spirals. There’d been these funny little dudes on the cover. Like, they were turtles, but they were also guys? He mostly grabbed it because it had the word ninja on it.

Steve hastily paid for a ticket and slipped inside before anyone could drive by and see him there, going to a matinee alone on a Saturday, just another loser with nobody to hang out with and nothing to do. 

He supposed he could have used this time to do homework. Could you be a dork if you hated doing homework? Steve used this thought to bolster himself, deciding he couldn’t possibly be qualified to be a dork, and breezed into the theater.

Almost instantly, he realized his mistake, although the severity of it did not hit him just yet. There was a gaggle of loud preteens buying concessions. Four boys, a couple of girls, everyone digging around for change in their pockets and piling dimes on the counter as an unimpressed balding man took their orders. Steve recognized these kids, and a stony dread began to settle in his stomach. The goofy-looking one with the baseball cap had ordered a large bucket of popcorn, but was making the man filling it up stop halfway. 

“I’ve perfected the system. It’s the classic problem, you put butter and salt on top and you’re all happy but then you eat past the top layer and it’s all blando city from there,” the kid said, speaking in that wide, toothless way faster than Steve could process. “What you have to do is stop halfway, then put in the butter and salt–” he gestured for the concessions worker to do so– “and then fill it the rest of the way and do it again. Multi-layered, baby! And then you keep a little bit of salt on hand to just sprinkle in if you ever get to a bare patch.” The boy, who Steve vaguely remembered as a Harrison or an Anderson or a– Henderson? Was that it?– the kid took a napkin and started furiously emptying the contents of a salt shaker into it. When he was satisfied, he wrapped up the napkin and stuffed it in his back pocket. 

The little ginger girl was shaking her head. “Gross.” Steve didn’t recognize her. Had she always hung out with them?

“It’s not gross, it’s called preparing for every eventuality,” said Henderson.

“I’m not eating anything that you’ve sat on.” The girl crossed her arms. No, Steve definitely hadn’t seen her before. 

“Next customer?” The balding man called, and the entire herd of children turned to look at Steve. 

“No way,” said Mike Wheeler. “It’s my sister’s annoying ex-boyfriend.” 

The kid always did have a mouth on him. But it was hard to be intimidated by a middle schooler with a bowl cut, especially not one that Steve had once walked in on practicing the Thriller choreography with the Byers kid. 

“What are you doing here?” Lucas Sinclair was hardcore glaring at Steve, but the intensity was somewhat undercut by the four boxes of Nerds the kid was fumbling to keep a hold of. 

“Uh, seeing a movie?” Steve rolled his eyes.

“You can’t be seeing Indiana Jones,” Mike said. “We’re seeing Indiana Jones.”

“It’ll be dark. We’ll sit on opposite sides of the theater,” Steve said. “I’m pretty sure you can tolerate my presence for, what two hours?”

“An hour and fifty-eight minutes,” Henderson said. “An hour and fifty-eight minutes of pure, unadulterated joy that you will ruin if you go in there.”

“We saw it already yesterday,” Will Byers offered up. Steve couldn’t bring himself to be quite as annoyed at that one, even if he was Jonathan’s brother. He just had these crazy-big puppy dog eyes. Steve guessed, after everything that happened in November, Will was entitled to let his eyes look however they want. “We’re showing Max today.” 

That must be the new girl. Steve knew the others; Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin had been friends basically since birth, and El had been a new addition after the Chief adopted her this past winter. The redhead was glaring at him, and Steve had to wonder what the kids must’ve told her about him. He hadn’t even had a chance to make a bad impression yet. 

Had he really sunk to the level of caring what a group of thirteen year olds thought about him? Steve shook this off and clapped his hands together. “Fun talk, you guys, but I don’t actually care. Have fun with your weird popcorn.” He brushed past the kids towards the theater.

“It’s not weird, it’s brilliant!” Henderson yelled after him. 

And Mike was still talking for some reason: “Dude, wait–” 

Someone was coming out of the theater he was going into, and they brushed arms, and she was calling out, “Come on, you guys, the movie’s about to start,” and– oh. Oh. It was Nancy.

“Steve!” She breathed in sharply, stopped in her tracks. “Oh.”

Yeah. Oh. “Hey, Nance.” Steve forced a smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“We’re just babysitting the kids,” Nancy said, all wide-eyed and quiet, pointing over towards Mike like that much hadn’t become glaringly obvious. 

“Yeah, for sure,” Steve said, and wished that he could talk like a person for once in his life. “I was just–” he tried to come up with a good lie. Just dropping by? Waiting for a date? Doing some field research for a study on lonely assholes who freak out over seeing their ex? “I was just checking out the movie,” he finished lamely. 

She looked at him for a moment, and then set her jaw resolutely. “Why don’t you come sit with us?”

Steve blinked. Looked over his shoulder at the kids. They were looking back at him with varying levels of hostility. Back to Nancy. She actually was smiling at him. It looked genuine. She was so good at that. Steve wished he could be a genuinely nice person. 

“Okay, yeah,” Steve decided. “Sounds good. I didn’t see the first one, though, so I’m not gonna have any idea what’s going on.”

Nancy cracked a smile. “Me neither, but Jonathan says it’s not that kind of a sequel. He went with the kids last night and he must’ve liked it a lot to come back today. Come on, it’s gonna start.” She looked over Steve’s shoulder and gestured to Mike and the others. “You don’t want to miss the beginning, right?” 

It didn’t fully register, until he sat down in a darkened theater between Nancy and Henderson, and Jonathan was leaning over and saying hi to him, that he was seeing a movie with his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend and six disgruntled pre-teens. That this was the pinnacle of his social life. 

Steve wallowed for about the first seven minutes of the movie, and then the mobster guy shot the waiter and Nancy went, “Oh!” And the tension broke and they each laughed down the line. And then some guy sitting in front of them turned around and shushed them, and it was all pretty okay. 

At some point, he leaned over to Henderson, because Nancy and Jonathan were holding hands and he was actually starting to be in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin that. “So, wait, so why does Han Solo want this stone thing?” 

The kid gave him a withering glare. “I know you know that his name is Indiana Jones. And he’s an archaeologist. It’s his job. He thinks it’s one of the legendary Shankara lingam shivlings that’s supposed to bring good luck and prosperity.”

“Pretty sure most of those were not words.”

“Just because they’re in another language doesn’t mean they aren’t words,” Henderson muttered. “Be quiet.”

“You’ve already seen the movie, dork.”

“I am a nerd,” Henderson hissed. “Learn the difference.” 

About fifteen minutes later, Steve managed to sneak some popcorn from Henderson’s bucket. It was the perfect amount of salty buttery goodness, not that he’d ever admit it to the kid. Henderson didn’t notice the continued theft for about five minutes, because Steve was a goddamn ninja. 

“You’re that kid,” Steve whispered to him, pointing at the screen, because watching Henderson get redder was almost as entertaining as the movie itself.

“I take that as a compliment,” Henderson shot back. “Short Round is badass. Anyways, you’re the elephant.”

Steve laughed, which garnered a look over from Nancy. The dude in front of them turned all the way around to give Steve the stink-eye over the back of his seat. 

“Watch the movie,” Steve mouthed at him with exaggerated motions, and he could have sworn he saw Henderson crack a smile out of his peripheral vision.

By the end, Steve had entirely forgotten to be awkward. Indy got the girl, the elephant splashed them with water, and let himself laugh alongside Nancy and Jonathan and the little twerps. And then the credits rolled and the lights came on, and it occurred to him that he could just be cool with this. In a group, with half the kids loudly grilling Max on if she liked the movie and the other half hotly debating its sociopolitical implications, it was easier to stand next to Nancy and Jonathan with a realer sort of smile. 

“Did you like it?” Jonathan was asking him, like he genuinely cared. 

“He’s so cool,” Steve nodded. “Even if he is a professor or whatever. The minecart scene was awesome. And the heart thing was grody.”

“The first one was better, but this held up pretty well.” Jonathan nodded. 

They walked out together, the whole big group of them, into the sunny May afternoon. Henderson was arguing with Sinclair about the girl from the movie, Willie whatever, and saying she was “so not as cool as Marion Ravenwood, I mean, come on,” and then actually turned and asked Steve his opinion. 

“Uh, I didn’t see the first one, but the chick in this one was hot,” Steve said, scratching at the back of his neck. Henderson groaned and rolled his eyes and Sinclair did a little I-told-you-so dance and Steve felt like part of something for the first time in a long time. 

Nancy was finishing counting heads and turning to Steve, like she wanted to say something, a big fat smile on her face, the one that Steve had always been a sucker for, and then the car pulled up. The blue Camaro. Steve stilled, Jonathan stiffened, Nancy’s smile got all tight and she looked away. The kids didn’t really seem to register that anything weird was going on, except for Sinclair, who got all frowny, and the ginger kid, who Steve didn’t think he’d ever seen without a frown. She approached the car, and Steve was on the verge of shouting out to her to stop, wait, don’t you know who’s in there? 

Billy Hargrove stuck his hand out the window, tapped some ash out onto the asphalt, then poked out his head. If anything, he looked worse. Steve had seen his wounds pretty up close and personal two nights ago, and he thought he would’ve remembered a split lip with all the time he’d spent not staring at Billy’s face, Billy’s stupid face. But there it was. And a little cut on Billy’s cheekbone. Steve wondered what it felt like. Where it came from. How Billy could still pull it off, still look good.

“Come on, Maxine.” Billy hadn’t seen him yet. He was looking at the girl, and she was glaring back at him, and, wow, Steve sure was slow on the uptake, wasn’t he? The girl didn’t look anything like him. Steve didn’t even know Billy had a sister. But there she went, dragging her heels towards the car. 

Billy looked up. Right at Steve. They locked eyes. Nancy had said something to Steve, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what. 

“Looking good, Hargrove,” Steve said, because Billy was ignoring him and he hated it and he’d give anything for that wildfire rage.

Billy looked at him for a long moment. Everyone did. Warily regarding the bear that had just been poked. Finally, Billy raised one eyebrow and said, “Don’t you know it’s rude to stare, Harrington?”

Steve smiled. Gotcha. “Oh, sorry, sorry, I forgot. You’re not a billboard. It’s just– are you sure I haven’t seen those curls on the Miss America billboard over on I-69?”

Billy rolled his eyes. “You wish you sixty-nined.” 

Nancy clapped her hands together. “This has been great, but we really have to go. Are you good with Max?” 

“I don’t know, is Max good with me?” Billy gave her a stare that felt particularly harsh, even from him, and she got into the passenger seat, slamming the door hard behind her. 

“Didn’t know that you were a chaperone now,” Steve said, because he’d never learned to leave well enough alone. 

“Owed a favor.” Billy took a long drag from his cigarette, then flicked it over to the ground at Steve’s feet.

“Should’ve seen the movie.” Steve could feel Nancy getting antsy next to him, and surprised himself with how little he cared. “There was a monkey in it that reminded me of you.”

A couple of the kids snickered. Billy frowned, a funny little crease developing before his eyebrows. 

“It’s funny,” Henderson said, “because the monkey has no brains. In the movie. They eat the monkey brains. He’s calling you stupid.” Oh my god, Steve loved this kid. Steve wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and take him home and give him a lollipop or something. Now that he thought about it, Steve wasn’t really sure what to do with kids. He didn’t think his parents had known, either. 

“You like your guts on the inside of your body, kid?” Billy growled. “You wanna keep them that way?”

“I’m not scared of you, metalhead,” Dustin replied, but Nancy was already grabbing him by the back of his flannel and pulling him back towards Jonathan’s car. Steve still couldn’t believe she’d dumped him for someone that drove a Ford LTD.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” she said, shepherding Mike, El, Will, and Dustin into a cramped backseat. Sinclair must have lived close, because he was picking up his bicycle from where he’d abandoned it in front of The Hawk. Steve had no idea how none of those things hadn’t gotten stolen or run over yet, with the regularity he’d seen the kids leave them lying around. 

“Hey, Steve, are you, um.” Nancy tilted her head to the side slightly. She reminded Steve of a bird. He used to call her Cardinal when she wore that red fleece jacket. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine.” Steve barked a rough little laugh. “Good movie. Thanks for, y’know.” 

“Okay,” Nancy said, looking between him and Billy– who still hadn’t driven off, who was waiting, who was watching Steve talk to Nancy– she seemed unconvinced, but she settled on a tentative “see you later,” and got in the car with Jonathan. 

A hand clapped Steve on the shoulder. He looked around and it was Lucas, perched on his bike and wearing a grim expression. “Do you need backup?” 

“Uh, no, I think I’m okay,” Steve managed. 

Lucas gave a solemn nod and set off around the corner, bobbing back and forth on his bike. Steve tried not to let his gaze linger on the alleyway, the alleyway where a pair of cops had dragged Jonathan, clawing and shouting, off of him. He could taste blood in his mouth, and it made him think of Billy. 

Billy. Steve looked back, and Billy was still there, hanging out the open window, staring at him. The girl who was named Max was slumped in the passenger seat, arms crossed, pretending not to watch the encounter. 

“They think I’m going to kill you,” Billy said, all mild and casual. 

“Are they wrong?” 

“Very dramatic, Harrington.” Billy smirked. “You trying out for the school musical?”

“Hey, man, I was the Teen Angel in Grease, and I knocked it out of the fucking park,” Steve said. “And I wouldn’t be throwing around any insults if my face looked like that.”

“Not as beautiful as I am in your dreams, King Steve?” Billy was toeing some kind of line, and Steve didn’t know what to do with it. 

Steve wanted to tell Billy that he didn’t dream about him. That he dreamed about stags, running wild in the woods, butting antlers, stags alone in the moonlight. He didn’t say any of that. He said, “You know, I actually did see the other guy, and he didn’t look half as bad as you. You go around talking some big game, Hargrove, but by my count you’re oh-for-two.”

Billy flipped him off and pulled his head back in the car, revving the engine. Apparently they were done with that conversation. 

“See you on Monday,” Steve called. Billy slammed into reverse and peeled out of the parking lot. “Hey, jerk,” Steve shouted after him, “speed kills!”

But Billy was already gone. Billy and his sister, his sister who was part of the dweeb consulate, the dweeb consulate that contained Mike Wheeler, brother to Nancy, Nancy with whom Steve had just enjoyed an entirely pleasant movie.

Steve wished he lived in a bigger town. He wished he lived in fucking Tulsa. But no. He had to be a Hawkins boy, born and raised. He would probably go to school at Bloomington or Notre Dame or something. Or just skip out on the whole college thing and go right to working for his dad. Either way, Steve was pretty sure he was going to die in Indiana. 

He didn’t hate every part of it. It had its moments. Sattler Quarry was one. The flat expanse of road out by Merrill’s pumpkin patch. The train tracks that you could walk on and watch the sun go down behind the trees in purples and bloody pinks. The freckle stars. 

And Billy had talked to him. Steve got in the Beemer, drove on home, and counted this day as a good one.


	9. Rules

Here was the thing about being a rule-breaker: you needed to know all the rules. Billy had learned them all, young, in the hardest ways. He’d learned not to slam the door, not to burn the eggs, not to interrupt. Those ones his dad had taught him. He’d learned to always hold onto his surfboard, to never skimp out on an oxford comma, to rely only on himself. Those ones his mom had taught him.

Experience had taught him a few rules. Always keep a spare tire in the trunk. Don’t climb up on oil pumpjacks and try to ride them. Don’t mix red wine and vodka. Billy was really good at learning from experience. 

He made sure to track these rules, because it made breaking them easier. If he was going to interrupt his dad, it had better be for a good reason. If he wanted to hop a fence, it was better for his image if he did it right next to the sign that said no trespassing. Stuff like that. 

The issue was when he started breaking his own rules. Those were the ones he had to abide by, for his own sanity. Stuff like hating Max and not talking to Steve Harrington. 

It should have been easy enough. He’d started with the ignoring game on a Friday, and he’d expected that he’d have a whole weekend to get his brain back to more livable conditions. He hadn’t slept much Friday night, after the inevitable blowout with his dad. Max had gone right to her room, Susan had conveniently decided she needed to clean the bathroom. Neil had been particularly vicious. Billy had expected it, because he knew the rules, but that didn’t exactly make it go down any easier. 

Neil had been wearing his class ring. Billy hated that thing. After it was over, Billy had sat there on the ground with his back against the living room wall while Neil went to Susan and took her into the bedroom and told her to tell him all about her day. 

Billy had laid his head back against the wall and tried to get his breathing under control– in through the mouth, out through the mouth, because his nose was too stuffed up with blood. He was bleeding from a little cut on his cheekbone from the ring; he knew, because the blood came down to rest on his upper lip and he had to lick it away. It tasted the same as it always had. Billy sat there for what must have been half an hour, like a goddamn idiot, and then dragged himself to the bathroom and cleaned himself up.

The bruises from Tommy were still fresh. No one at school would question it, which was a good thing, because Neil hadn’t been half as careful as usual. Maybe he’d figured it out, too. That it was easier, for the kind of painting that he did, to work on a canvas that was already marred. Billy had washed up, dragged out the first aid kit, and not thought about Steve tossing a similar one to him on the fancy Harrington couch. 

Billy didn’t cry, either. That was rule number one. 

Instead, he laid awake for a long time, shifting to find a way to rest that didn’t hurt so bad, and he thought about girls. He was going to have to get a girlfriend. Or, at the very least, someone to get to third base with. Nicole was an obvious choice, Tommy and Carol’s pretty single female friend. It would mesh perfectly with their social group. But then it would be a whole thing when he didn’t want things to get too heavy, and, anyways, he didn’t like redheads. 

Tina was okay. He didn’t remember a ton of the party at her house pre-fight, but there were flashes in there of her in a crop top, leaning across her kitchen island to smile at him. She seemed nice. Sort of popular-adjacent. And Tammy Thompson was cute, always twirling her hair around one finger. Anna Jacobi, with the big smile. A little nerdy for him, but still.

Billy briefly considered trying to steal Carol out from under Tommy, just to see if he could, but he and Tommy were cool now, and everyone said that Tommy and Carol had been screwing since, like, eighth grade. And she was kind of mean. She regularly talked shit about Tommy to Nicole while Tommy was sitting right-the-fuck next to her. Billy didn’t trust either of them, not with how quickly and easily they’d dropped Steve. 

And there he was again. Back on Steve. He grabbed the pillow out from under his head and pressed it hard over his face and considered suffocating himself. There were rules, there were rules for a reason, and hadn’t he learned anything from California? 

Billy wondered at how easily he let himself forget about that night, even now, with his ribs still aching from a well-timed gut punch on his dad’s part. If Billy was as smart as he thought he was, he wouldn’t keep skirting around the same stupid idea like blood circling the goddamn drain. If Billy was so in control, he could stop himself from thinking about Steve Harrington for five minutes.

He didn’t know what it was. Definitely not the hair. He’d laughed riotously the day he’d learned that everyone calling the guy “The Hair” was not meant as an insult. Of course. Hawkins, Indiana. It wasn’t Steve’s stupid yuppie car, either. He didn’t even take good care of it. There was always gunk on the windows. And it wasn’t Steve’s big fancy house, because, big and fancy though it was, the place looked more like a museum than a place that people actually lived. Not to say that the Hargrove-Mayfield residence was particularly homey, but at least there was a little grit to it. A smell, a taste, a sense of permanence. Steve’s house had been weird. Ephemeral. Like it could float away at any moment and leave Billy lying there on the couch in the middle of an empty plot of earth.

There was no conceivable reason for Billy to still be thinking about Steve. No upside. Nothing to gain, everything to lose. Anyways, Steve was still totally in love with Nancy Wheeler. 

That much had become evident the next day, when he’d seen them outside The Hawk together. Except, Steve had been the one to come up to him, hadn’t he? It had taken all the grit Billy could muster to drive away, to stop himself before the wordplay, the weird ambiguous insults became something he couldn’t deal with. Especially in front of Max.

She’d looked at him funny on the way home, although it took about ten minutes for her to actually say what was on her mind. 

“That was weird. You were being weird.”

“Deal was I had to pick you up, not play nice with your friends.” Billy leaned back in his seat, tried to look as not-weird as possible.

“He’s so not my friend.”

“Well, good, because it’s weird for him to be hanging out with a bunch of kids, anyways.”

“Why do you even care?” Max was all pouty and sunken in her seat. “You aren’t friends, are you?”

Billy snorted. “No. No way.” Whatever he and Steve were, it was definitely not friends. “Also, Sinclair looked real nervous.” Deflect. That always worked with her.

“Wonder why that might be.”

“No reason for anyone to be nervous,” Billy said, “so long as I don’t see anybody doing something they aren’t supposed to do.”

“Nothing to see.” Max sunk deeper, the seat belt slipping up to dig into her throat. 

“Cool.” Billy drummed on the steering wheel. The unspoken agreement there: don’t let Billy see it. Don’t let anyone see it. That was the real problem, that she didn’t seem to understand. One trucker on the street sees little Max Mayfield and Lucas Sinclair holding hands, he goes and mentions it to his mechanic when his truck breaks down, the mechanic tells his wife, who tells her book club, and so on and so forth until Neil’s wolf ears perk up and hear something they shouldn’t. It’s like she’d never learned how to keep a secret.

Billy thought he had. He used to think he was swell at secrets. He’d only ever mentioned the hill to her. Hadn’t ever even talked about Sid. But that one had capsized, anyways. And, loath though he was to admit it, Billy didn’t mind the way that Sinclair looked at Max. Like he wanted to make sure she was okay. Precious little kids. 

Billy stayed quiet the rest of the car ride home, escaped the evening at home unscathed, and tried to think about girls again until he fell asleep. 

He walked into school Monday resolute, a man on a mission. Not a Holy Grail kind of mission, but Billy figured he didn’t need no fancy stinkin’ cup if he could get a girl to go out with him.

He must’ve been projecting some sort of aura of wild confidence, or emitting mad pheromones, because Tammy Thompson came up to him while he was still at his locker. He closed it and raised one arm to lean against it, watching her come up. 

Tammy had these long waves of blonde hair that she obviously put a lot of work into. She was the kind that went to all the parties but wasn’t quite cool enough to throw them. He wasn’t sure he’d ever exchanged more than two words with her, but he dug the white suede jacket with fringe she always wore when she wanted to look cool. 

She was wearing it today. She held her book bag to her chest and flashed a smile as she beelined right for him. He waited for her to talk first, and, after a blinking moment of uncertainty, she did. 

“Hi, Billy.” Tammy squeezed her book bag tighter. She was nervous. Billy wasn’t. It was, he supposed, because he really didn’t care. He smiled back and gave her a once over. 

“Hey.”

“So, um, this is super weird, you’re gonna think I’m so weird, but. Okay, here goes.” She reached up with one hand to nervously twirl at a blonde strand. “I have a crush on this boy.”

What, were they in middle school? Billy licked his lips and considered whether this was worth it. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Tammy blushed. “And, uh, I thought you could maybe help me.”

Billy leaned in closer. He liked her perfume. Lavender, for sure, and maybe some sandalwood? “I bet I can,” he said. He could make this work. 

Her face lit up and some of the tension bled out of her shoulders. “Oh, thank you, thank you! Carol said you were a really good writer, so I was thinking, like, a letter?”

“I’m sorry, what?” 

“A letter?” Tammy repeated. “To Steve? I’m just so awkward and bad at that kind of stuff, and Carol said you’d helped her with her English homework and that you were totally ace at writing.”

Billy thought back to two weeks ago, when he’d wanted to go out and get drunk at the junkyard but Carol had complained about being “so behind on homework, seriously, Billy, if I miss one more deadline Mr. Sharpe is gonna kill me”, and Tommy had been a real drag about it, so, sure, he’d done it. It hadn’t been hard. He’d finished Tommy and Carol’s homework in a half hour flat and they’d gone out and gotten hammered. He didn’t think it would be a big thing. 

“You want me…” Billy started slowly, hoping to god he’d heard it wrong, “to help you write a love letter to Steve Harrington?”

Tammy let out a high, nervous kind of laugh. “Not a love letter. A– a like letter? I mean, only if you want to. I can get you beer, my brother’s in college and he has a fake ID and I can totally convince him to buy us some. So– I thought you could come over to my place tonight after track? Tina’s gonna be there, too.”

“Tina?” Billy echoed. 

“She’s, like, really cool, you know. I know she’d be super happy to see you.” 

“Uh.” Billy was off his game. He wasn’t even on the gameboard. He was a little metal Monopoly hat that a dog had picked up in its mouth and ran off with. This was ridiculous. He couldn’t possibly do it. It would be breaking at least four minor rules, and one big one. The no-thinking-about-Steve-Harrington one. 

“Yeah, okay,” Billy said. He’d always hated rules, anyway. 

Tammy’s house was nice. Not Harrington nice, but a cute little two-story with fairy lights tacked up out front. When he knocked on the door, an older lady answered it. Billy did the usual bit– “are you Tammy’s sister? No, no way, you couldn’t possibly be her mother. Did you have her when you were sixteen?”– and she laughed, all charmed, and offered him a platter of brownies. 

“The girls are upstairs,” she said, and Billy marveled at this house where he was allowed to just go upstairs with a couple of girls. Maybe Mrs. Thompson hadn’t heard his reputation. Maybe she had, and she was happy to have him in her house. 

Billy did a little one-two fake knock before pushing Tammy’s door open. She and Tina were both there, and bolted to their feet when they saw him. Tina smiled wide at him with this cherry-red lipstick on, and he looked away. 

The room wasn’t as girly as he’d expected. No Rob Lowe posters. She did have a record player, and Johnny Cash was filtering out softly. He didn’t mind the song. He had absolutely no idea where to sit down– not on her bed, that’s for sure, but he also didn’t like his odds with the big teal papasan chair– so he just leaned with an elbow on her dresser. 

“Hi, Billy,” Tina said, and she and Tammy exchanged this little smile with one another. 

“Of course my mom baked brownies.” Tammy rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I know it’s mega-lame.”

Billy hastily shoved the rest of it in his mouth. “S’fine.” It was actually really good. Billy couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a fresh-baked brownie.

“You want a smoke?” Tina tapped a few out, and Tammy went over to open her window. 

“Close the door,” Tammy said, and Billy complied. 

It was weird, hanging out with girls. He’d never really done it much before. He guessed that this was okay, though, because Tina clearly wanted to hook up with him and the thing with Tammy was more of a business transaction. Letter for beer. So. No one could really blame him, right? 

They smoked out the window for a while. Tammy and Tina talked about the new episode of Knight Rider last night and Tina kept “accidentally” brushing her arm against his. Billy didn’t move away. He didn’t really talk, either. 

Eventually, Tammy migrated to the bed. “Okay, so. Basically I just want to tell him that I like him and I’ve sort of been in love with him since last year and would he consider asking me to prom.”

Billy had forgotten that prom was a thing. It’d be in a little less than a month, now. He was surprised King Steve didn’t already have a date– but, then again, Harrington was probably still holding out hope for Wheeler. It wasn’t gonna happen. He’d seen the way she and Jonathan had looked at each other that day outside the movie theater. They were in it deep. 

Billy wasn’t really a prom person. There had been little homecoming dances at his old school, but the big thing to do with the people he’d known was to boycott and go around ripping down posters and then go down to the beach the night of the dance and get plastered. Billy missed the beach. 

“First of all,” he said, hopping up to half-sit on her windowsill. “No saying you’re in love with him. If you want a dude to ask you out, you definitely can’t come on that strong.”

“I thought boys liked that kind of stuff.” Tammy had started pulling on her hair again. “I don’t want to be a tease, you know?”

“That’s bullshit.” Billy waved her off. The cigarette was helping. “Look, teases aren’t real. Either you like him or you don’t. Do you like him right now?”

“Yes!”

“Great, then fucking own it. And if you don’t like him later, then break up with him or whatever.” Billy rolled his eyes. “All I’m saying is, don’t tell him you’re in love with him, because that makes you look like a crazy stalker, okay? You gotta draw him out.” Billy tapped some ash out the window, and when he looked up both Tammy and Tina were gazing at him with these wide-eyed, serious expressions. 

“Draw him out?” Tina nodded at him encouragingly. 

“Like– okay. Alright,” Billy said slowly. “You don’t talk about prom. Don’t even mention it. What you do is– is remind him of a moment you guys had together. Something that makes him look back and smile. Then, right there, positive connotation. You gotta make him feel good about himself, show him that you’ve noticed little things that other people haven’t noticed. But you can’t lose that air of mystery. The second that you let him think he’s got you all figured out, you lose the mystery, and then it isn’t sexy anymore.”

Tammy blinked. The girls were quiet for a long moment, and Billy started to itch in that unscratchable place just beneath his skin. This was stupid. He was stupid. What was he doing? Giving advice about boys? Like he knew anything. Like he had any right. The last boy– the only boy he’d– and that hadn’t even been real. That was just a thing boys did in California. That was just a Sid thing. 

“I love all of that,” Tammy said. “How do I do that?” 

Billy ran his fingers through his hair. He winced as his hand grazed a tender bump on his scalp, and remembered he looked like shit. The girls hadn’t said one thing about it, and neither had Tammy’s mom. It didn’t make him feel better. It made him feel like he was missing something, like this was all some elaborate prank on him. 

He sighed. “What do you have so far?” 

Tammy went to her desk and got a creased piece of paper, which Tina then snatched from her and proceeded to read aloud:

“Dear Steve, 

Just thought you should know, I think you’re really cute. I’ve liked you since we had History with Mrs. Click last year and you always showed up with great hair. If you haven’t asked anybody else to prom yet, I thought I’d let you know that I’m still open. 

Kisses,

Tammy.”

Tammy and Tina both looked up at Billy. Billy was trying really hard not to laugh, so he did that deep scowl instead that he’d perfected years ago. 

“Wow, perfect,” he said. 

Tammy’s face fell. “Well, I know it isn’t great, that’s why I asked Carol if she could do it for me and she said you were a really good–”

“Writer. Right.” Billy dragged a hand across his face, pushed back his curls a bit. “You got another cig?”

He started by just offering up advice– “Don’t start with ‘dear’, and definitely don’t end with ‘kisses’–” and critique– “you’ve had a crush on the guy for a year and all you could come up with is that he’s ‘really cute’?”– but it got too frustrating. 

It was around 9:30pm, and Mrs. Thompson had just brought up some more brownies. Billy was sitting cross-legged on Tammy’s geometric rug, hunched over a crumpled fifth draft. Tina had hung on his shoulder for a while, looking over and complimenting his turns of phrase every so often, but she’d gotten bored about a half hour ago and was now lying back on Tammy’s bed watching Tammy belt out a soulful rendition of “Suspicious Minds”. 

“I’m going to be a famous singer,” Tammy panted between verses. 

“You definitely are,” Tina said. “Hundred percent, I know you are.” 

Billy let out a little grunt of annoyance and hunched closer to the paper, grabbing another brownie. 

Out of his peripheral vision, Tina elbowed Tammy in the side. “Shh, he’s concentrating,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear. 

He put the pencil down and stared at the paper on the ground. This was fucking idiotic. He’d gotten so complacent, so comfortable, with the brownies and the music and the girls being nice to him, and the words just coming out fluid and easy and right like they did when he was really in the zone– he’d forgotten. He’d forgotten who he was, what he did, what that meant. 

It was a good draft. Steve would like it. That made him laugh, a little, in an it’s-really-not-funny kind of way. What the hell did he even know about Steve Harrington? What did he know about what Steve would like? Stupid. Billy was so good at getting ahead of himself. 

He coughed a little and sat up straight, and the girls looked at him. Time to save his image as much as possible. 

“Are you done?” Tammy asked. 

“Yeah, whatever, should be good enough.” He shrugged. “You got any of that beer you promised me?” 

“Oh, yeah, for sure. There’s a six-pack in the fridge in the garage. One sec, I’ll go grab it.” Tammy bounced off her bed and out the door, and then Billy and Tina were alone in there. 

He pushed himself to his feet, hand instinctively going to his side as the ribs ached and pounded.

“You’re always hurt,” Tina said. She was still on the bed, just looking at him. She wasn’t trying so hard now, was sitting kind of hunched over with a thoughtful expression. 

“Get in a lot of fights.” 

“I know. You were at my house.” 

“Sorry ‘bout that.” Billy grimaced. “Did your neighbors really rat you out?” 

She shook her head. “It ended up okay. Just had to clean up some stains and stuff. Nobody actually broke anything.” They were both quiet for a minute, then: “Why’d you rile him up?”

“He was being an asshole.” 

“Tommy’s always an asshole.” Tina rolled her eyes. “That isn’t, like, news. I thought you guys were friends.”

“We are friends,” said Billy, who had no idea what the hell a friend was supposed to be. 

“You act really different in school, you know?” Tina kneaded her hands together. “You’re actually kind of not a jackass in real life.” 

Billy crossed his arms. Tried to harden himself a little bit. This was too close. This wasn’t what getting a girl was supposed to be like. “You don’t know what real life is.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” 

She wasn’t bad looking. And he liked her more when she was like this, less nervous and performative. He guessed she liked him more like this, too. Billy imagined taking her out somewhere. The mall? The movies? He thought of The Hawk and that made him imagine Steve and Steve in Grease and Steve calling after Billy as Billy drove away.

Billy thought of Tina asking to come over, and her meeting Max and Susan and Neil. Her sitting at the dinner table with them. If she came to that house, she would see everything. 

“If you think I’m such a jackass,” Billy said, not altogether nicely, “then why are you always fawning all over me at school and shit?” 

Tina fell back into herself. Billy watched it happen. “Wow. Okay. Real nice.” 

“What the fuck made you think that I’m nice?” Billy took a step towards her. “You don’t like me because I’m nice, do you, Tina?” 

Tina swallowed. “Who says I like you?”

“You like me,” Billy continued, because this had to happen, because he felt ugly anyways, “because I’m mean. Because there isn’t anyone else like me here. Because for the last two months, you’ve been imagining what it would be like to feel me touch you.” 

She came to him, then, and kissed him. She fisted her hands into his shirt and backed him up against Tammy’s bookshelf. She was warm, and good at kissing. 

It was okay. 

Tammy came back in, holding a six-pack of beer, and they broke apart. Tammy did a little gasp and then an– “I’m sorry, I didn’t–” but Billy felt fucking empty and he had to get out of there. 

“I was just leaving,” he said, and brushed past Tina, brushed past Tammy, grabbed the six-pack from her hands and walked right out the door. Mrs. Thompson wasn’t downstairs, which was just as well, because he didn’t think he could handle seeing her smiling, brownie-laden figure just then. 

He left the beer in his trunk, because no way could he bring that into his house, and stormed inside. They’d eaten without him. Neil and Susan were on the couch watching TV, and neither one registered his entrance. It was just as well. That was always one of the best possible scenarios for an evening; the one where everybody pretended like he didn’t exist. 

He went to his room and screwed his eyes tight and wished he’d never ever written that letter. 

“Steve– 

I remember that day in April when you came to school with a bruise across your jaw. It crept up towards your lip in orange and purple, and every time I caught sight of you in the hall it was all I could look at. I remember thinking it looked like a sunset. There I was, only half listening to the rest of the world, watching the sun set on the side of your face. 

I think everyone misses out by focusing only on your hair. That’s all they talk about, when I mention you: your hair. Its height, its length, the rise and fall of its waves. I don’t pay it so much mind. I think it’s a distraction. There are things I have learned by avoiding the trap that is your famous hair: your eyes, which are a softer shade of brown; your smile, which comes about fiercely when you make yourself laugh and gently when you make yourself proud; the slight hunch to your shoulders. I think your bad posture comes from a reluctance to take up the space you are owed in the world, but that isn’t really any of my business. 

I write you this because it is not enough to live on snapshots anymore, on small glances shot my way and happy moments that I am too reluctant to insert myself into. If you write back to this letter, it spells out hope for me. Don’t give me hope if you don’t at least halfway mean it. 

The method of communication is unconventional, I know. It’s just that words can so often mean anything but what they were intended. Words become volatile when you expose them to the open air. When I write it all down like this, it is palpable, concrete. I can hold it in my hand and know that what I’ve written is what I mean.

It’s entirely possible that you haven’t ever spared me a thought. Maybe you won’t, even now. If you never write me back, I’ll go on as I have been, and I’ll enjoy my sunsets on the Hawkins horizon, where they’re supposed to be. But if you do respond, we might begin to learn each other. In real ways, ways beyond the spectacle of the lunchroom and the stiff arcs of perfectly gelled hair. 

The way I see it, we only have so long here, in these messy years, before we’re supposed to become real people. If we don’t find something to care about now, in the most messy and dangerous ways possible, how will we ever? 

– Tammy Thompson. 

P.S. Your hair isn’t bad. But I could think of three or four much better nicknames to describe you.”

He had written it for Tammy. For the beer. That was all.

Steve would think it was weird, but Billy thought he might like it, in a secret, deep-down way. Nobody said what they meant here. It was a nice change of pace, Billy thought. 

Tammy could never write like that. 

If Steve liked it enough, maybe he’d wind up asking her to prom. 

Billy laid in his bed and thought about screaming. He didn’t scream. Instead, he reached with two fingers and pressed down on the sorest spot on his ribs, harder and harder, until he had a good reason to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we are at the part where it's a Cyrano de Bergerac!au


	10. Arctic, Baby

“Who the hell is Tammy Thompson?”

Nancy and Jonathan looked up across the table at Steve, brows furrowed in such perfect unison that Steve could’ve laughed. How perfect they were, how fitting. It was a wonder he hadn’t seen it sooner. 

Monday had rolled around, and he’d walked into the cafeteria at lunch instead of hiding like usual. He lied to himself and pretended like he didn’t know what he was doing in there. Like he wasn’t looking for anybody in particular. 

But before he could find a seat somewhere appropriately far enough away from Billy but still close enough that he could make eye contact were Billy to, say, decide to look at him, there was a great waving of arms. Nancy was beckoning him over to her table, her table with Jonathan. 

And Steve was bored of being lonely, and the movie had been fun, so he sat with them. And it kind of wasn’t horrible. Nancy had just started talking like it was completely normal for him to be there, and Jonathan, with all the grace of the newly loved secure beside his lover, had smiled. Steve took it in stride. 

It was Tuesday, and he just came right in and sat across from them. If it had been a one-time deal, they’d let him know. Until then, he could pretend that he had friends. Anyways, he was all off-kilter. There’d been a note in his locker this morning. 

“I don’t know?” Nancy was frowning. 

“I know that name,” Jonathan said. He paused to think in that quiet way of his that reminded Steve of a particularly thoughtful sort of mouse, and then said: “Tammy Thompson. She’s on the yearbook committee.”

Steve chewed on the end of his little plastic fork. “Hm.” 

“Are you– is she a friend?” Nancy tried.

  
Steve shook her head. “No. I don’t know her. It’s fine, it’s nothing.” He and Nancy were doing a lot better, but telling her about the weirdly personal love letter he’d found shoved through the slits of his locker felt like a step too far. “You guys, uh, got weekend plans?” He didn’t actually want to hear about their fun cute weekends, but it was better than answering followup questions about the nature of his relationship to Tammy Thompson. 

Nancy sighed. “We were going to go to Enzo’s– got a reservation and everything– but Joyce just got scheduled for an extra shift at Melvad’s, so we’re watching the kids instead, I guess. They have some big game night and Mike was being really annoying about rescheduling.” 

“Jeez,” Steve said. “Enzo’s is fancy.” 

Nancy looked down. “Yeah, it’s our–” Jonathan did a weird little elbow in her side and she paused. The two had an entire conversation just with their eyes, and Steve wondered what that would feel like. He remembered trying to get Nancy to read his mind. He didn’t actually believe in ESP or any of that, but when she’d known he was thinking of blue, he’d really been so happy. Maybe, he’d thought, they’d reached some kind of shared frequency. Maybe they were finally on the same wavelength. It had felt like something was working. 

Now, he realized, they shouldn’t have had to try so hard. Nancy and Jonathan came to some sort of unspoken agreement, and Nancy looked up at Steve. “It’s our two months.”

Right. It had been February when Steve had climbed out of her window and not looked back. It had been late March when he’d first seen them kiss, light and nervous, against Nancy’s locker after school. It was late May now, almost the end of school, and here they all were. The Three Stooges. Steve wondered why he always had to be the one to end up with a pie in his face. 

They were waiting for some kind of response. Nancy had those big, sort of sad eyes again, and Steve was tired of it. Tired of people treating him like he was fragile. If there was one good thing about Billy Hargrove, it was that with each punch came a solid follow-through. No apologies, no waffling. Billy planted his feet and Steve took the hit and at least they both agreed that Steve could take it. 

Steve could take this. If he was gonna hang out with them, even just like this, at lunch, they needed to know that. He was a big boy, and he was so over it that shit like their fancy two-month anniversary at Enzo’s didn’t faze him at all. Steve tried not to think about his two month celebration with Nancy, how they’d watched a movie together and he’d spent the whole time trying to figure out a sophisticated way to ask her if he could touch her boobs. 

In the end, he hadn’t asked. She’d gone home content, and he was left with this lingering rush of adrenaline and disappointment in himself. He’d seen breasts before. She wasn’t his first girlfriend. But she was the first one that he thought he’d like to ask. 

Steve looked up and didn’t think about Nancy’s anything and looked her right in the eyes. “Why don’t I watch them?”

“You– what?” Nancy blinked.

Steve puffed out his chest and shrugged. “I can babysit, it’s no biggie. They’re just playing some kind of nerd game, right?” 

She was giving him a weird look, mouth hanging slightly open and brows pressing together. It wasn’t a bad look. Steve thought that it was possible he’d surprised her. It made him smile back at her. The usual Idiot Steve Harrington had never used to surprise Nancy. He could shotgun as many cans of beer as he wanted, crawl in her window a thousand times, and she’d always just shoot him this wry look: “Is that supposed to impress me?”

“We can pay you.” That was Jonathan, quickly stepping in. Steve was tempted to accept the offer, at least to save his own reputation a little bit, to make it seem like he was doing this for any reason other than disproving Nancy Wheeler’s assumptions. But then he thought about the Byers house and its busted screen door that hadn’t been fixed in months, and he thought about the last time he’d gone to Enzo’s, a birthday dinner for his dad that had most certainly been in the triple digits. He thought about the box of chocolates he’d bought for himself with the fifty his parents always left him on the counter before they went away– a little consolation prize for being so responsible, or, perhaps, a bribe. So he would stay cool about it all. 

Steve decided that it was enough for him to do this out of the magnanimity of his heart. “That’s cool. Just owe me a favor or something.”

“Oh my god, Steve, you’re the best,” Nancy said. 

Billy was doing something weird over at his table. He’d lifted his leg up to stick his boot on the edge of the table, and Steve watched as Billy drew a match from a matchbook and struck it hard across the sole of his boot. It roared into flame, and everybody over there made little awed noises. Everyone but Tina, who was sitting unimpressed at the far end of the group, arms folded tight across her chest. 

“So, uh– Steve?” Nancy was saying something. Steve blinked back into reality and nodded at her. “My house, seven o’clock on Saturday. You don’t need to really even watch them, they’re thirteen; you can just bring homework or something. I think mom’s just worried because of the time Dustin tried to make Jiffy Pop and set the kitchen on fire.” 

“Noted,” Steve said. “Fire bad.”

“Don’t let them go out in the woods at night,” Jonathan added. “Even if they tell you it’s part of their game.”

“I’ll just avoid anything that sounds like it could be the opening of a horror movie,” Steve said. “Sound good?” 

He spent most of the afternoon zoning out in classes and thinking about the note. He thought he might vaguely remember a Tammy from History last year, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall any distinguishing characteristics that might help him recognize her in the halls. 

It was definitely the weirdest letter he’d ever gotten. Not that he’d gotten many letters. He remembered writing one in sixth grade to Alicia Klein, with little boxes for her to check if she liked him. She’d checked yes, and he’d bounced around his house for the next three days like the happiest little boy in the world, and that was basically all that came of it. She’d moved to Chicago a few years after that, and Steve recalled feeling vaguely jealous. 

This letter, though. He’d found it in his locker in the morning and read it, and then read it again. It had almost made him late to Algebra II. He wondered if he should feel creeped out about this girl who’d apparently spent so much time looking at him and noticing him and thinking about him. He wondered if he should feel a little bad that he hadn’t ever noticed her. 

Mostly, though, he felt… well, he didn’t know exactly what it was that he felt, but it settled in his stomach like anxiety and churned there all day. If he was anxious, he didn’t know what it was for. She’d said plainly enough in the letter that he didn’t have to write her back if he didn’t want to. But he kept digging it out of his backpack and rereading it, in every spare moment between classes, or even in class if he thought the teacher wouldn’t notice. He took to keeping it in his back pocket for easier access. 

“Words can so often mean anything but what they were intended,” she’d written. Hadn’t he always thought that? That he was so bad at interpreting things? Maybe it hadn’t ever really been his fault. Maybe the fault was in the heft of spoken words themselves. She’d called them volatile. Steve knew it was true. 

And she’d talked about his bruises, and his eyes, and his smile– Steve had never thought about the variance of his smiles before– and his posture. He caught himself slouching in his seat, hunching his shoulders forward when he walked, and made an effort to straighten. To, as Tammy said, take up the space he was owed in the world. 

He didn’t actually think the world owed him all that much. He’d already gotten more than he needed from the world, and figured he could go on with a little less. And after November, after Barb– didn’t he owe the world a little something?

He’d used to think that was why Nancy stopped loving him. Because of Barb. Like, what if the same thing happened with her when she looked at his face that happened to him when he looked at his swimming pool? The thought made him sick. But he couldn’t really blame her. He’d been the one who’d insisted she and Barb come to that party. It had been his house. His beer. His shitty friends. His pool. 

He thought a lot about how he’d wanted so badly to have sex with her that night. He’d made a mixtape and everything, and he’d actually cleaned his room and borrowed one of his mom’s scented candles so it would be nice. She hadn’t cared as much. She’d never cared as much about that kind of stuff as he had. It had hurt sometimes. He’d lie awake at night, alone in the house, and wonder what she wanted that he didn’t have. And how he could make himself have it.

He’d usually come to the conclusion that girls just didn’t like sex that much, and then let himself sleep. 

But looking back on that night, with Barb and the pool, Steve was sure that if he hadn’t asked her, she wouldn’t have felt the need to go upstairs with him. She would’ve been content to stay outside with Barb, partying in her understated kind of way, and everything would’ve been different. Barb would have had someone looking out for her. 

Instead, Steve had taken Nancy upstairs and they’d had sex to Phil Collins while Barb drowned in the pool. 

Steve wondered what Tammy would say about that. 

He was still thinking about it when practice rolled around, and it knocked him off his game. 

“Distracted, Harrington?” 

Steve blinked up and Billy was right in front of him. Billy’s bruises were healing up a little bit. He was playing skins today, all sweaty and toned. Steve had used to think his own body was pretty good, before Billy showed up. Steve was sure those bruises must hurt, but Billy was playing harder than ever. Steve thought about what Tammy had said about sunsets. 

He faltered, and Billy stole the ball out from under him. He watched Billy dribble it back across the court, dodging left and right around the opposition, and land a clean slam dunk. 

“Keep your head in the game,” Billy shouted across the court to him, but he was smiling. Steve thought it might be a real smile. It was weird; Steve’s failings on the court had never made Billy that happy before. 

After practice, he caught Billy on the way out, sinking into step just behind him. “I don’t believe my eyes. Is it possible the notorious Billy Hargrove is in a good mood?”

Billy turned to look at Steve over his shoulder. He was flushed, and– there it was still, the hint a genuine smile. “You think I’m notorious?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I think you seem weirdly happy for a guy who looks like he was just run over by a semi-truck.” 

“You still caught up on my face, Harrington?” Billy smirked. “Get a new playbook.”

“Maybe you should stop getting into fights.” 

Billy laughed and kept on walking. He’d been doing that more, lately. Walking away from Steve. Making Steve have to initiate the conversations. He wasn’t fully freezing him out like he had right after that night, but he didn’t seem to take the bait quite so often. 

Steve wondered when it had turned into him baiting Billy. Or when he’d started caring at all whether or not Billy Hargrove talked to him. Time was when just sitting with Nancy for lunch would’ve been all he could think about. But now there was Tammy, and whatever that whole thing was, and Billy smiling on the court like he knew a secret that made him infinitely amused. 

Steve didn’t know what to do with this version of Billy, the one that wasn’t just going around being angry all the time. He thought about that look Billy had given him, staring up from the bottom of the stairs: “It’s raining.” 

He followed Billy into the locker room as they all started to peel off their sweat-stuck clothes. “What did you do to Tina?”

“Tina who?” 

“Tina who sits with you at lunch every day?” Steve cranked on the shower, squinting across the water at Billy. “Tina who’s been glaring at you? Tina whose party you got totally hammered at the other–”

“Oh, that Tina.” Steam rose around them. Nobody else took the third showerhead, and Steve was strangely glad. Billy was pushing his hands through his hair and pointedly not looking at Steve. “Messed around a little the other day. Didn’t think she’d take it so personal.”

“You and Tina?” Steve snorted. 

“Me and a lot of girls. What’s it to you?”

Steve shrugged. “It isn’t. But, see, I don’t know how they do things in California, but here in Hawkins? We usually try to leave the girls smiling, not looking like they want to kick your ass.”

“And by ‘the girls’, you mean Wheeler? Are you actually expecting me to believe she let you get in her pants?”

“Uh, yeah.” Steve hadn’t talked about Nancy like that since he’d uncoupled from Tommy and Carol back in November. But this didn’t really count. It was just Billy. “I mean, I definitely hit that.”

It was hard to tell over the sound of falling water and the rising steam, but Steve was pretty sure Billy was laughing. “You– hit that?”

“We dated for almost five months, man,” Steve said. “What? Why are you–”

“Just– you hit that.” Billy looked over at Steve, cocking his head back and to the side. He grinned. “I can’t believe people used to think you were cool.”

“I’m arctic, baby,” Steve said, and there was a long, tremulous pause. 

They both burst out laughing. Billy turned his shower off first, clapped a hand on Steve’s upper arm as he walked past: “You crack me up, King Steve.” 

And then Billy was gone, off to the lockers, talking with Tommy and the others without so much as a glance back at Steve. He could do that, because he had friends. He had a life. He had, apparently, tons of girls to bang. 

Steve had a seat at lunch with his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, a date to go babysit some nerds over the weekend, and a folded-up letter from a girl he didn’t really know. 

It sort of relieved him, realizing he was jealous of Billy. It explained a lot of things. He rested comfortable in the newfound knowledge. He was allowed to be jealous. That was natural. 

For the first time in forever, Steve was excited to go home. It wasn’t that he loved school or anything, but at least it occupied his time. It was harder, in empty evenings, trying on clothes and cooking microwave dinners for himself and rewatching his tape of The Jerk for the 47th time, to forget how lonely his life was. But tonight was different. Tonight, he had something to do. 

Steve didn’t have any delusions of being a good writer. His essays were mediocre at best, and Nancy had always been on his case about split infinitives and similes or whatever. He was more of a visual thinker. Or an out-loud thinker? Steve racked his brain trying to think of a type of thinking he was good at.

He wasn’t sure when exactly he’d decided he was going to write Tammy back. Maybe it had never really been a decision. He didn’t know her, had no idea of knowing if she was cute or cool or if he’d like her, but the letter was still in his back pocket on the drive home, and every so often he’d move his hand back to make sure it was still there. Maybe he liked it because it was an adventure. It sounded like something that would happen to someone in a book, not to real people. Certainly not to him. The most exciting thing that had ever happened in Steve’s life had happened in his pool, and he spent most of his time trying not to think about it. 

Well. Billy was exciting, too. But in a different way, a way he couldn’t quite place or name. It was probably something about him being from California and generally doing things in a different way. He’d certainly changed the way they did things here. Steve had heard talk in school of this week’s upcoming Thursday Night Party, which had never been a thing before and sounded pretty stupid. He was sure it was Billy’s invention. 

But Billy was Billy. This letter was different. This letter got to be all Steve’s. He got to hold it and read it whenever he wanted and keep it in his back pocket. It was his little secret. It strangely made him feel like a kid again. He remembered being twelve and sneaking out with Tommy to camp out in the forest. Tommy had told his parents he’d be sleeping at Steve’s house, and Steve’s parents hadn’t asked him about it at all. He wasn’t entirely sure they noticed he had vanished overnight. If they did, they didn’t say anything about it. 

He and Tommy had set up a tent all by themselves, duct-taping a pole that wouldn’t stay in its place. They’d brought a box of Count Chocula and a couple of cans of pop and a big flashlight that died halfway through the night. They’d gotten scared and had curled up in the tent and told each other ghost stories in the dark. Steve remembered waking up alone in the tent, an early morning light filtering in, and starting to cry because he thought Tommy had left him. But when he unzipped the tent and climbed out, there Tommy was, rationing the cereal into the little plastic bowls they’d brought. 

“You’re here!” he’d said. 

And Tommy had said: “Where else would I be?” And then had cocked his head to the side. “Are you crying?”

Steve shook his head, dragging a sleeve of his sweatshirt across his face. “Sweaty. It’s hot.”

“Oh, for real.” Tommy had taken Steve’s words at face value, hadn’t pressed. But he’d given Steve a little extra cereal and kept looking up at him, more often than usual, with a look that almost resembled concern. 

Now, alone in his great big house, Steve made himself some mac ‘n’ cheese on the stove, and took it over to eat on his kitchen island. He smoothed out a blank piece of paper in front of him. He was going to write back to Tammy. He’d asked around and figured out where her locker was in what he thought was a fairly impressive display of sleuthing abilities. He’d just write it and drop it off in her locker and it would be fine. 

He set pen to paper and decided to just write whatever came into his head. First draft, right? That’s what his teachers always said. Anyways, he was pretty sure if he stopped to read or actually think about what he was writing in any way he’d lose the courage to do it at all.

He started: “Tammy–” because that’s how she’d done it, no “Dear” or anything, and it seemed appropriate. 

“Tammy–

I wish I could write a lot of nice things about you like you did about me, but I don’t know how to. I don’t seem to know you even half as well as you know me. It’s weird to be known by a stranger.

I hope I don’t hurt your feelings by calling you a stranger. Obviously I’ve seen you. We had History together. But I don’t really know anything about you. I don’t know what your smile looks like when you laugh or when you’re proud or what kind of car you drive or if you like milk and sugar in your coffee. I do. Two big spoons of sugar. But anyways, even if I did know all that, even if we were best friends already, I think it would be hard for me to say things the way you do. I’m not good with words. I don’t know what I am good at. 

Maybe it’s because people say that you should write what you know, and I don’t know anything. I thought that I would know more by now. I know my parents thought I would. But what you wrote, about not being real people yet– I don’t know if I’m ever going to be a real person. How does anybody do it? So many people I know seem like they know exactly who they are and what they’re going to be, and I’m never sure about anything. 

That’s not true. I guess I do know one thing that I’m good at, and that’s loving things. I love white chocolate. I love rom-coms. I love doing my hair, although I know your feelings about that. I love the way that the air feels if you drive up to Sattler Quarry right before it’s about to rain and stand out there in the open. You should try it sometime and tell me what you think. 

I think a lot of people are afraid to love things. I understand that. There’s been a couple of things that I’ve loved, loved hard, that have broken my heart. But that’s the whole point; proving to yourself that you do have a heart in the first place. It wouldn’t hurt so much if you didn’t really care.

The worst times in my life have been times when I convinced myself I would be happier if I didn’t care so much. It’s lonely, and it’s bullshit. I’d rather be the idiot that cares a lot about everyone and everything than the jerk who goes through his life without loving anything. 

So, I want to get to know you, too. I could use a friend. I’d like to know what kind of stuff you love. What kind of music do you listen to? Where do you go when you feel sad? How do you take your coffee? 

– Steve

P.S. If I knew you better, I’d give you a nickname too. Give me another letter and I’ll think of one.”

Writing it made him sad. It made him think about Nancy, and Tommy, and all the friends he used to have that he’d never get back the same way. It’s scary to wake up in the forest with your friend gone, but it’s way worse to never have had a friend with you in the first place. 

Steve dreamed that night. He was sitting on the ground in the forest, and there was a stag a few yards away. He was terrified that if he made a wrong move, it would run and he’d never see it again. He wasn’t scared of the dark of the forest. If he was left alone in it, it would be alright. He’d lived in the dark of it before. He just thought it would be an awful shame if he never saw that stag again. 

It came close, timidly, one little foot at a time, and bent its nose to touch Steve’s hand. It was warm. 

Steve woke up. 


	11. Untethered

“Steve–

I like my coffee black. When I’m sad, I drive around in my car. Sometimes I’ll just floor it on those empty roads by the farms and the pumpkin patch with all the windows down so the wind roars in my ears and I forget about everything. And I don’t think you’d like my music taste. A little more hardcore than you’re used to, I suspect.

Do you ever feel feral? Like a wild animal? I get into these moods, sometimes, where I don’t even feel like a person. I feel like a creature, maybe, or a natural disaster, a wildfire. Something that was borne of pure emotion and rages infinitely. It’s just so easy for me to sink into these spirals where I start feeling like nothing matters, like there are no limits to what could happen in the world, no order. When I feel like this, I begin to think that if I die, nobody at all would care. 

It’s times like that, when I feel completely untethered, that I break the things that I like. I wish I didn’t do it. The only way to stop myself is to get away from everything, because then there’s nothing around me to hurt other than myself. And I can take it. Maybe next time, I’ll drive up to Sattler Quarry and see what you’re talking about.

I’m writing to you like this because I hate small talk and easy little lies. I want us to be honest when we talk here. We’re already breaking enough rules on how people are supposed to meet each other. 

At any rate, I don’t think you’re bad with words at all. I think we just aren’t used to being honest. It’s been beaten out of us by our professors and our peers and the celebrities we admire and idolize; all that everyone wants is for us to memorize the perfect answers, by which of course they mean the responses that they would say. I take issue with their approach entirely. I don’t even think they ask the right questions. 

That, I think, is why you’re afraid of becoming what you call a “real person”. Nobody’s a real person in that way, and if they think they are then the likelihood is they’re just inauthentic robots regurgitating ideas they’ve heard from other people that they think have everything together. 

From the way I write, you might think that I’m some kind of rebel, that I’m always raging against the system. I’m not. I play into it, just like everybody else does, because I’m afraid of what will happen to me if I don’t. I’m rarely ever honest, because it’s hard work, and I am too often right on the edge of going feral anyways. But I’m going to be honest here with you, because I like you. And I want you to know the real me. 

– Tammy

P.S. You aren’t an idiot. Stop putting yourself down.”

Billy was living three different lives. In school, he was the notorious Billy Hargrove, who kicked people’s asses and held the keg stand record at 42 seconds. At home, he was crazy Billy, the fuck-up under constant surveillance lest he ruin his fresh start. 

And in the letters? In the letters, he was Tammy. Except he wasn’t really Tammy. He had no idea how Tammy took her coffee, and he sure as hell didn’t think she sped around the streets of Hawkins feeling feral. 

This is how it had worked. Tammy had come to Billy after school with a letter Steve had slipped into her locker in response. She hadn’t had Tina with her, and she’d given Billy a side-eye at first, like she was supposed to be mad at him, but she couldn’t keep it up for long. She was really excited about the letter; she’d already read it and said that she didn’t completely know what Steve was talking about but thought it was “mega-sweet”.

Billy understood what Steve was talking about. He thought it was a perfectly good letter, and when he read it, it made him smile. His smile had been getting the better of him this week. He had to tone it down a little; he couldn’t have people going around thinking, “Billy Hargrove? The guy that always smiles? He’s a marshmallow!” 

But Steve had been so distracted on the court, and Billy had spotted him pouring over the letter on two different occasions that day. So what if it made him smile? He was proud, was all. It had been a good letter.

Apparently Tammy thought so too, because she commissioned him to write the next. “I don’t care what it says,” she’d said, “just do whatever you did last time. And maybe you could bring up prom?”

Billy had shook his head. “Not yet. Soon.” And he’d taken Steve’s letter home with him and composed a response at one in the morning, after he could be sure that Neil was good and thoroughly asleep. 

He’d kept Steve’s letter, because Tammy hadn’t thought to ask for it back, and hid it in a way he’d learned about from this old spy book he’d read at a library when he was seven. He disassembled one of his pens, a free one he’d gotten from his dad’s old security firm in California, and rolled Steve’s folded letter up really tight into a cylinder. He screwed the top back on, and, voila. A hiding place even Neil couldn’t figure out. 

It was risky, even keeping it at all, and it wasn’t necessary. But then he thought about it and about how Steve was really writing to him, and not to Tammy at all, and that Steve had asked to be his friend, and the idea of throwing that letter out became impossible. So maybe Billy was a sap. So what? He’d kick in anyone’s teeth who said it out loud. 

Also. Steve had called him notorious. So, all in all, things were going pretty okay. 

“What’s your deal?” Max was glaring at him. They were driving to school. It was a Friday morning, which meant it was Steve’s turn to write back. Billy was going to have to coax the letter out of Tammy. He wished they could just cut out the middleman already. 

Billy raised his eyebrows at her. Not even Max could kill his buzz today. “No deal.” He checked the speed limit. Only going five over. “Look, I’m even driving nice for you.” 

“I know. You’re being weird,” Max said. 

“Have you considered that maybe you’re being weird, twerp?” Billy reached over to flick her shoulder, but she recoiled, didn’t let him touch her. That prickled a little, because did she still not know by now that he wouldn’t– but it was fine. Everything was fine. “If you keep frowning like that, your face is gonna stick that way.”

He reached over and cranked up the music. He’d put in his Mötley Crüe cassette. He thought about Steve asking for his music taste and it made him smile involuntarily. Harrington wouldn’t know good music if it kicked his ass.

Max reached across him to turn it back down. “I need a ride.”

“I’m not in that good a mood, Max.” 

“Tomorrow,” she pressed on, valiantly. “It’s some kind of big deal. This is the first time they’ve ever invited me to their party, and if I don’t go now then I can’t be in it.”

“They?” Billy adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and tried to think of Steve, Steve’s letter, happy things that didn’t make him want to drive off the road. “You mean those boys, right? From the movie theater?”

“It’s not just boys.” Max rolled her eyes, like he was the one being obstinate. “My friend El will be there, too.”

“You’re too young for parties,” Billy said, because it’s what Neil and Susan would say. Never mind the kinds of things he did when he was thirteen.

“It’s not that kind of party.” Max scowled. “It’s a– a game. A game night.”

“Wow, Max. Nice cover.”

“Ugh!” She threw her hands up and looked away from him. Billy realized she was blushing. “It’s a nerd thing. A nerd game. They call themselves a party, I don’t know, it’s stupid as shit but Mike said we all have to make characters for the game tomorrow night otherwise the party will be unbalanced or whatever–” She was very pointedly not looking at Billy. “Anyways. It’s not like there’s gonna be alcohol or anything. They’re all just dorks. And there’s gonna be some babysitter there watching us.”

Billy could have laughed at her. It would have been so easy; she’d given him plenty of material. But however many times she called it dorky or stupid as shit, he could tell she really cared. If Neil found out she was hanging out with a bunch of boys, he’d go ballistic on Billy. 

Steve’s words popped into his mind, unbidden: “I’d rather be the idiot that cares a lot about everyone and everything than the jerk who goes through his life without loving anything.” 

Billy couldn’t fathom why, but Max cared about these kids. And she wanted to be a part of their little game night, and this was her chance. Billy sighed and drummed along to the beat on the steering wheel. Stupid Steve Harrington and his stupid fucking letters. 

“Where?” He asked. 

Max widened her eyes. “Wh– uh– Mike’s house! The Wheeler house. It’s on Maple Street.” 

“Nancy Wheeler? She gonna be watching you?” The chick’s choice of boyfriend reflected poorly on her, but she did seem, at the very least, responsible.

“Uh, no.” Max was fidgeting in her seat. “They hired a babysitter.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know. Some guy.”

“Perfect. I’ll go drop you off to hang out at night with some guy. Sounds good.” 

“God, Billy.” Max’s hands were little fists on her lap. “He’s one of Nancy’s friends. Go ask him or something. I think he’s named Steve.” 

Billy stopped. Not the car, he kept driving at a steady pace– he just sort of stopped thinking for a second. And then Steve’s face swam into his mind. Steve out by the pool, asking, “Where does it hurt?” And how Billy had wanted to pull him in close and whisper, “Everywhere, everywhere.” 

“Billy?”

“I’ll take you,” he said. 

“Wait, seriously?”

“Quit while you’re ahead,” he said, but it was half-hearted. Because of course he was going to go. Because Billy Hargrove was a goddamn sap. 

He got a letter back from Steve. It was sweet. Steve had asked more questions and told him that he was smart. Steve had given him a nickname– given Tammy one, technically– and Billy just absolutely hated it, because it was so sweet it’d rot his teeth if he let it sit in his mouth as long as he wanted to. “Rebel Rebel,” Steve had called him, like the Bowie song, and had addressed the letter to him like that.

“You should ask him now,” Tammy said. “I need to get a dress and he has to make sure he matches the corsage. I like roses.” 

“Sure thing,” Billy said. “I’ll make sure I get to it.”

“And– can you tell him I liked what he did with his hair today?” 

“For sure,” Billy said. As if he was going to write Steve about his hair, or the prom. That wasn’t what they were doing. Their letters were about something more than all that. “I’ll get it to him on Monday,” he told Tammy, so at least he had the weekend to figure out how he was going to deal with it.

Steve ribbed him a little on the court. Billy quipped back. It was okay, he justified, as long as Steve started it. Billy had to respond then, to protect his reputation. Steve actually managed to get the ball from Billy today and did a little under-the-leg trick with it. Billy had to try to pretend like he wasn’t impressed. Steve wasn’t the greatest player ever, but Billy harbored a secret suspicion, bolstered by some of the coach’s comments, that he’d gotten better since Billy came. Steve had just needed some decent competition. 

Steve wasn’t competing for the title of King, though. He never had been. This week, he’d basically cemented his place on the social ladder as fallen royalty by sitting with Wheeler and Byers every day. Billy thought Steve must be some kind of masochist to hang out with them after what they did. But, then again, Billy willingly subjected himself to the inane chattering of Tommy and Carol every day, so who was he to talk?

Tommy had sidled up to Billy in the locker room after practice, which was frustrating because Billy had been hoping for Steve to tease him again like last time, to give him an excuse to get close. Instead, as soon Tommy approached, Steve veered off, and Billy didn’t see him again. 

“I heard what happened with Tina, man. Nice going.” Tommy held out a fist, presumably for Billy to bump, which Billy resolutely ignored. 

“What’s she going around telling people?” Billy asked, but it didn’t really matter. Any way it got spun, he would come out looking like the cool one. That was the way that worked. 

Tommy rolled his eyes. “She’s been going around saying you’re a dick and a player or whatever. Everyone knows it just means that you got some and she regrets it.”

Billy wondered if she did regret it. She’d seemed into it enough, at the time. But it hadn’t been a moment to treasure. It had been a cruel kiss, one designed to shut her up and to stop her from prying into the mystery that was Billy Hargrove. It was possible she was mad at him for leaving so soon afterwards. But everybody knew that Billy didn’t do girlfriends. He did quick hookups in alleyways and makeouts at parties. 

Truth was, she was one of three girls Billy had even kissed here. The other two had been once he’d gotten drunk and sloppy enough to be able to stand it. It always made him feel– wrong. Empty. Like it would be alright in the moment, but after one of them pulled away there would be this black hole inside him created from the void where the girl had been. Like something dark and disgusting was sucking all the feeling out of him.

Or maybe Billy himself was the void. Maybe he just wasn’t capable of loving anyone. How disappointed would Steve-from-the-letters be? 

“Just as long as she still invites us to her parties,” Billy said, and Tommy laughed, because it was laughable. The idea that Billy might not be invited to a party. 

“You want to come over tomorrow night?” Tommy asked. 

Billy let a grin spread across his face, and lied in his not-quite-lying kind of way. “Can’t. Got a date at the Wheeler place.”

Tommy let out a low, conspiratorial “ooh”. “You hitting that nerd shit?” 

“No way,” Billy said, and then leaned in with a wink. “A little young for my tastes.”

Tommy’s eyes lit up in understanding, and just like that the seed was planted. If anyone saw him over there, they’d think he was getting it on with Mrs. Wheeler. It really wasn’t very hard to convince Tommy of his fabled dastardly exploits, which Billy relied on heavily, having only actually kissed three girls in the months he’d been in Hawkins. This whole school was incredibly susceptible to the power of suggestion. Billy could make a killing doing close-up magic. 

That night and the majority of Saturday, Max tiptoed around Billy, like if he saw her he might suddenly realize his mistake and change his mind. He considered saying yes to her more often, just so she’d avoid him like this more. Billy avoided Neil, in turn. Just once, he’d like to show up in front of Steve unbruised and unbroken. 

It was a balancing game. He wanted to look good, but not like he was trying to look good, because then Neil would ask questions and Steve might catch wind of more than he was supposed to. Billy tried to remind himself that all he was doing was dropping Max off and picking her up a few hours later. This wasn’t an anything. 

He picked a short-sleeved button-up with the intention of unbuttoning it at least three buttons lower once he got out of the house. He was allowed to be a little self-indulgent every once in a while, right?

Max came up with the lie. He was almost proud; she was getting a lot better at this. “My friend El invited me to watch a movie at her house,” she said. 

“What movie?” Neil gazed at her casually, levelly, across the table. It was a trap. 

Max was ready with an answer: “Freaky Friday.” Nice. Age-appropriate, and it actually sounded like something Max might watch.

“Where is this house of hers?” Neil thoughtfully twirled his class ring on his finger. He wasn’t looking at Billy, but Billy still kept his face neutral, expressionless. 

“Her dad’s got a cabin over by Denfield.” Max had this look in her eyes, like she had something up her sleeve. Billy ate his mashed potatoes and pretended like he didn’t care. 

“Does this dad have a phone number?” Neil asked. 

“Oh, sure, he’s easy to reach.” Max sent a sugar-sweet smile across the table at Neil. “He’s the Chief of police.”

Neil leaned back in his chair. Didn’t say anything, didn’t eat anything either. He looked past Max, out the window. It was just beginning to get dark outside. Finally, he said: “Your brother can drive you.”

“Fine,” Billy said, with a scowl to really sell it, because any expression of enthusiasm would’ve ruined the charades: the one he was playing for his dad, and the one he was playing for Max, two levels of feigned disinterest. 

And so they escaped. Billy got her in the Camaro and waited until they were two blocks away to start unbuttoning his shirt and scrunching his curls. He glanced over at Max. “Nice.”

“Whatever,” she said. 

As far as conversations with Max went, he counted that one as a win.

He pulled up outside the Wheeler house, the Camaro cutting slick through a seven o’clock sunset. When Max kicked open the passenger side door, it was oranging outside, and Billy watched as it lit her hair up in a ferocious fire. 

“Wait a second,” he said, stepping out and bracing himself against the car. It was warm, and he could feel the light gild his chest where skin poked out from behind shirt. He closed his eyes and held his breath, and he could almost feel himself in California, standing on that hill with Sid. 

“Wait,” he’d said to Sid, pushing the slimmer boy away, soft-handed. “Just– look.” And he’d turned his face out to the California sunset and let it wash over him. All Billy ever did was drown. 

But when Billy breathed in, the air didn’t settle on his tongue with that familiar taste of salt and sweets. It instead tasted overwhelmingly of pine needles. He let go of the memory and looked to Max. “10:00pm sharp. Don’t make me come in and get you. And send that babysitter out here, ‘kay? Got to make sure he’s on the level.”

She rolled her eyes and stomped inside, sneakers slapping against the pavement. She knocked on the door, and Billy waited at the end of the driveway, leaning all cool and suave against the side of the Camaro, for Steve. 

Steve opened the door, looked at Max, and they exchanged a few brief, unintelligible words before Max pointed sullenly in Billy’s direction. Steve looked up, and– smiled. Billy was in such big trouble. 

Steve sauntered up to Billy, slow, like he had all the time in the world and he was content to spend it all on Billy. “What do you know? Billy Hargrove, in the flesh.” He came all the way up to the Camaro and braced a hand on it, raising an eyebrow at Billy. “Owed your sister another favor?”

Billy let his tongue run out over his lips. It almost masked his own smile. “Not my sister.” Steve blinked at that and looked lost. He must really not have known. “Step-sister,” Billy clarified. “I know, I know, we look so much alike.” 

Steve blushed a little, and, even just for that, this whole thing was worth it. “So she’s, like, your–”

“Step-mom’s daughter.” This was getting dangerously close to talking about Billy’s family, which was absolutely on the list of rules. That had always been top-ten material: do not talk about Neil. Even mentioning Susan like this was toeing the line. Billy switched gears. “Heard you got a secret girlfriend.”

Steve’s eyes went wide. Billy had to stifle a laugh. Harrington was so fucking transparent. “What? Um, no. No secret– no.”

“Sounds exactly like what someone with a secret girlfriend would say.” Billy smirked. “No, but I don’t believe it. Everybody says Harrington's got himself a girl, but I know it can’t be true. Because we both know that you, my friend, are still hung up on Wheeler.”

“Not your friend,” Steve said. “And I’m not hung up on Nancy, either. That’s, like, ancient history, man.”

“Then why are you babysitting her kid brother’s nerd squad?” There it was, the gotcha moment. The problem is, Billy didn’t want to catch Steve out. He didn’t want Steve to confess: yes, you’re right, I still love Nancy, obviously, what else could it be? 

“Because I’m a nice, wholesome person,” Steve said, “who does nice things for his friends.”

Billy couldn’t suppress his grin that time. It wasn’t necessarily a genuine answer, but it hadn’t been one that hurt. Friends with Wheeler. Billy could work with that. “Oh, please help me, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, my kitty’s stuck in a tree.”

Steve held up a finger. “Ah ah, but you see, I said I only do nice things for my friends.”

“You wound me.”

Steve shrugged. “If you wanted to be friends, you would’ve taken the sweater.”

Billy’s heart skipped a beat. Apparently they were talking about that night, now. When had that become a thing? “If you wanted to be friends, you shouldn’t have expected me to wear anything cable-knit, Harrington.” 

“What, too elegant for your tastes? I forgot, you only wear leather.”

“And denim. Layers of denim.” 

They both laughed at that, and Billy was all afire. His skin was burning everywhere that Steve’s glance grazed it. His tongue felt sharp, wicked, and he could think of at least seven better things he could be doing with it, but right now trading not-quite-insults with Steve Harrington felt like something beautiful and apocalyptic. Billy was the library of Alexandria and, oh, how he burned. 

“What do you have to do to become a member, anyways?” Billy asked, gesturing to Steve’s gray Members Only jacket.

“Just the fact that you’re asking that shows me you’re not a member.”

Billy rolled his eyes. “I never was one for the secret society shit. Your rich daddy part of an Elk Lodge?”

“A what?"

“You know. One of those fraternal brotherhood things for adults,” Billy patiently explained. “Man, you really don’t know anything.”

“I know things.” Steve scoffed. “Anyways, it’s not like you’re some endless well of knowledge.”

“Straight A’s, baby.” 

Steve looked taken aback by this. “No. No you don’t. You don’t have good grades.”

Billy put his hands on his hips. “I don’t?”

“No,” Steve repeated. “No way. You show up to class hungover and beat to shit half the time.” 

“Maybe your little Hawkins High classes are just easy,” Billy said. He thought of That Night, of how Steve had said he was celebrating getting a good grade. He wondered what a good grade meant to Steve. But Steve had everything perfect in the world and Billy had jack shit, so he leaned into it. “You’re not telling me that the famous King Steve is a bad student, are you?”

Steve bristled. “Sorry I don’t flirt my way into the teachers’ good graces.” 

“No, I’m sure you flunk those classes all on your own.”

Billy thought it was funny, another little way to prod at Steve. No skin off his teeth. What the hell did school matter to someone like him, anyway? But Steve wasn’t laughing. He had a sudden sour look, not dissimilar to the one he got whenever Billy brought up Wheeler. 

“I’m not flunking anything,” Steve said. “Jackass.”

Billy held his hands up. “Ooh, touchy. My apologies, your Majesty.” He struck a silly accent, all Cockney and over-the-top, so that Steve would stop looking at him like that. “I’m sure you’re a model student.”

It kinda sorta worked, but Steve’s smile was thin-lipped, and Billy couldn’t help but feel as if he’d broken something. Neil’s voice, in the back of his mind: “I break things.” Yeah. Like father, like son.

“I have to watch the kids,” Steve said, in this tone that let Billy know that he was being a bother. “Don’t you have friends to go beat up?”

Billy matched Steve’s little not-smile with a meaner one of his own, half snarl. He was beginning to feel that wildness take shape in the digging of his nails into his palms. “Plenty. Don’t you have– oh, wait, I forgot. You don’t have any friends.”

Steve backed off, away from the car. Just turned and headed to the house without a retort for Billy, without a clever comeback to let him know this was all just part of their game. He did stop, eventually, halfway down the driveway. He didn’t look back at Billy, but he called out to him: “Who’s saying that I have a secret girlfriend?”

Billy was quiet for a second. The night was so large and he was so small. “Nobody.” 

Steve walked into the house and shut the door behind him. Not slammed, not pulled so hard it shook the foundation of the house. He just shut the door, like the thing he was leaving outside was of no concern at all to him.

Billy drove away reckless and wild, peeling out of the driveway and letting the Camaro do the screaming for him. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. The sun had gone and set while he’d been talking to Steve, and the sky was now that sort of deep, dark blue that gives you nothing. No light, no moon, no comfort. Streetlights passed, and with them little pools of perfectly round light. Billy kept an eye on them as he blew by; he kept expecting to see a figure standing in the center of one. 

Eventually, the streetlights gave away and it was only him and the headlights and the flat empty backwater roads. He was driving fast enough that if a little animal were to dart out in front of him, there’d be nothing he could do. He imagined it happening: a squirrel, too adventurous for its own good, flattening under his wheel with a bump. He imagined he’d just keep on driving and never look back. Or maybe he’d swerve and run the car headfirst into one of the great big evergreens of the encroaching woods. He’d be dead, the squirrel would be fine, everyone would be happy. 

He wondered how long it would take anyone to look for him. They’d notice he was gone, sure. But how many days of, “Oh, that’s just Billy Hargrove, he’s wild like that,” would pass before someone would think to call the Sheriff, search the roads, find his mangled, bent-up body?

Would they bury him? Billy would kill Neil if they buried him in Hawkins, Indiana. No, no, he’d want to be cremated. Ashes in a fucking tupperware, scattered off the PCH into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. He’d write that up in his will, but he was pretty sure that would only incentivize his dad further to just stick him in the ground in any old place. 

Here lies Billy Hargrove, friendless jackass. Hopeless sap. Ugly motherfucker. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision, really, to drive to the quarry. It’s not like he’d been ruminating on the letter or anything. The last thing he wanted to do right now was think about Steve Harrington. But then he was there, parking just off the rocky cliff face that peered down into the dark waters of Sattler Quarry. He crashed out of the car, and he slammed the car door, because he wasn’t a pussy and if he knew anything it was how to do anger right. There was still beer in the trunk, the stuff he’d gotten from Tammy, under the brown leather jacket he’d draped atop it. 

He grabbed a bottle and pried the top off with his house key. It jumped off with a little pop and fell to the rocks beneath his feet, playing that little game where it tried to circle on its edge as many times as possible before falling flat. 

Billy didn’t wait to see the end. He jumped up on the hood of his car and drank and drank until the bottle was empty and his chest was sticky with missed droplets. He hurled the bottle as hard as he could, and it careened down into the quarry. He never heard it land.

Lying back on the car, knees pulled up to point at the stars, that warm rush of a light buzz pooling in his middle chest, Billy thought he understood what Steve liked about this place. It was open, expansive, and just this side of dangerous. One unsteady move by the edge and the rocks would disappear beneath your feet, replaced with air, then water, then the blackness of a long sleep. It was the closeness to a danger like that that made you really feel alive. 

Billy felt relaxed. Tired. He was trying to find Orion’s Belt, but his eyes kept drooping shut. He let the right one close and tried to peer up with only the left before finding that, too, sink down into an easy rest. It wasn’t even that late. He had hours here to lie, think, sober up, fix his life, before he had to pick up Max. 

His thoughts slowed, and he was grateful for it. He thought too much. He thought too much about Steve. There was an elephant’s foot on his chest that pressed down ever so slightly when he acknowledged this, and he suspected that if he let his thoughts venture too far in that direction, the stomp would come crushing down with all its pachydermal weight. 

It was untenable, he thought. To live like this. Either way he played it, Billy was fucked. He couldn’t not engage. And he sure as hell couldn’t say the things to Steve that he’d begun to dream more and more of saying. 

But Tammy could. At least, Billy thought with a drifting smile, there was that. And then he must have begun dreaming, because he was back on the California beach with his mom, and she was wearing her white dress and telling him everything was going to be okay.


	12. Mean People

The kids were alright. Once they’d all amassed, talking over one another at a dizzying speed, they disappeared down into the basement. Steve had stood awkwardly at the top of the stairs, unsure of whether to follow them or not, but then Mike said, “Party members only,” and shut the door in his face. 

Steve hadn’t been in Nancy’s house since– well, since Nancy. And the only other times he’d been there without her were when her parents had hired him to clean out their gutters. Not the most stimulating work, but they seemed to like him so much and prize his abilities highly. At least, his abilities to get his hands dirty and not fall off rooftops. Karen– was he supposed to go back to calling her Mrs. Wheeler, now?– had been so nice. She’d made him little ham and cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and he’d eaten them on his break and talked about how wonderful Nancy is, how well she was doing at school, what their plans were for Homecoming. 

He sat now at that little table and remembered that Prom was coming up soon. He wondered if he could pull off going stag. Was that in vogue? It would probably still be less humiliating than if King Steve skipped entirely. 

God, how he hated that nickname. He’d used to think it was kind of endearing. It implied that people were talking about him, and probably nice things, too. He’d never used it himself, he wasn’t that conceited, but it was kind of sweet to have a nickname. He always flushed when someone used it in front of Nancy, though. Because he knew she would see through it, that it was distasteful to her. 

The only person who used it anymore was Billy. And that was always in a derisive way, another little thing that he digged into just to gall Steve. It held just about as much weight as when Billy called him “your Majesty”. In a way, Steve appreciated it. Billy saw through the words as much as Nancy always had, as much as Steve did now, but, unlike Nancy, Billy never made it sound like it was Steve’s fault. It always came across more as a broad critique of the reality show that was Hawkins High. 

It made Steve think of Tammy. Of what she’d said about how all everyone wants is for you to memorize the perfect answers to the wrong questions. Sometimes, he felt like she was the only person who actually knew him. 

Which was ridiculous, of course. He didn’t know her. He kept having to remind himself of that.

He’d written her back, and there was a strange sort of bubbling in his stomach that was different from anxiety when he thought about how he wouldn’t hear back from her until Monday. Sometimes he wished he could just get her number and call her. But then, he imagined it, imagined getting flustered and saying the wrong things, and the way the spell would break and she’d just be another mediocre thing in his life that would eventually leave him.

There was some shouting from downstairs and Steve wondered if he was going to have to go break up a fight– his money was on the El chick– but then he heard something about wizards and rogues and decided it was best not to get involved. 

He had brought his homework, after all. And he was going to do it, any minute. He just had to put some music on first. You know, to energize himself. The Wheelers had a stereo system with a record player on top, and he figured they wouldn’t mind if he used it so long as he didn’t break any records or anything. They had a lot of Paul Anka, some Louis Armstrong. He thumbed through the sleeves and pulled out an Etta James record. It crackled to life. 

Steve was hungry. Just a small snack and then he’d start work. He’d packed a sandwich, but then he’d crossed Mrs. Wheeler as he arrived and she pulled on a stylish coat and she’d told him that he was welcome to anything in the fridge. 

He didn’t know how she could still be like that, after everything with Nancy. He didn’t know what Nancy had told her about what had happened, but he assumed it hadn’t depicted him particularly favorably. 

He wasn’t actually sure what Nancy thought had happened. What it had been from her perspective, when he crawled out that window and didn’t look back. He probably thought he was being the crazy possessive jealous boyfriend of everyone’s nightmares. Or maybe she knew he was right. Maybe that’s why she didn’t fight so hard, why she avoided him in the halls: guilt. 

Steve could mull it over a thousand times and still not come up with any new answers. He opened Nancy’s fridge and fished a pickle out of a pickle jar. Slumped back into his seat. Tried to think of another excuse to stall the impending doom of his work.

The door to the basement opened, and Dustin trudged out, looking far too wearied for his age. 

“Henderson. My man.” Steve perked up. “Aren’t you supposed to be having a party?”

“I got exiled.” Dustin heaved a heavy sigh and sank into the seat catty-corner to Steve’s. 

“So soon?”

“I accidentally seduced El’s character.” Dustin cast large, mournful eyes towards the ceiling. “I’m playing a bard, that’s what bards do! I was just trying to smooth talk her into paying for my drink. It’s not my fault I rolled a crit success.”

“You’re too young to drink,” Steve said.

Dustin fixed him with a withering stare. “I’m a two hundred year old elven bard, Steven, and I wanted some mead.” 

Steve snorted. “Can’t believe you tried to steal Mike’s girl.”

“Did not!” Dustin protested. “He’s way overbearing. I told everyone we should have let Will DM.” 

Steve didn’t know half of the words Dustin was saying, but hell if he was going to ask and then have to sit through twenty minutes of Henderson’s nerd-talk.

The nerd-talk might have been better, though, than Henderson’s next topic of conversation: “You were talking to Billy Hargrove for a while out there.”

Steve swallowed, suddenly dry-mouthed. That had not been one of their better conversations, and he had been well on his way to blocking it out. “Was I?”

“You know he’s, like, the antichrist, right?” 

“I thought that position was filled by the kid from The Omen.”

“I’m serious,” Dustin said. “He’s like, actually evil. But not the cool villain kind. He’s, like– he’s Sauron, Steve. That man is Sauron.”

“You’re saying that like I should know what it means.”

Dustin pounded a fist on the counter. “God! What are some things you actually know?”

Steve grimaced. “I don’t know. Um. I saw Valley Girl?”

Dustin closed his eyes, inhaled with flaring nostrils, then exhaled again. “You’re testing me, Harrington.” He opened his eyes. “Okay. Star Wars. You know Star Wars, right? Billy Hargrove is Emperor Palpatine. Do you understand me?”

“That’s the old guy with the cloak and the wrinkles and the lightning fingers?”

“I will kill you where you stand.”

“Relax, I’m kidding,” Steve said, although he was still only seventy percent sure he was thinking of the right guy. “Look, he’s not that bad. I mean, he’s kind of a jacka– I mean, kind of not the nicest guy around, but he isn’t actually evil.”

“He’s trying to keep Max and Lucas apart,” Dustin said. “And he’s super mean to her all the time. Will stopped biking alone for a while because he thought Hargrove was literally going to run him over with his car.”

“Henderson, I hate to break it to you,” Steve said, “but I’m pretty sure Billy doesn’t spend his time cruising around looking for preteens to murder. I think he has better things to do.”

“Yeah, like plotting the downfall of the rebellion! And what is this, are you on a first name basis now? ‘Billy’? Jeez louise.” 

“We go to school together,” Steve said. He wasn’t prepared to have to defend his relationship with Billy to Dustin Henderson, of all people. He wasn’t even really ready to discuss it with himself. “We see each other around. Anyways, I’m just Mike’s sister’s ex, aren’t I?”

Dustin shook her head. “You’re cool. We all forgive you, except for Mike, ‘cause it was his sister, you know. But we appreciated your conduct at the movies.”

“You appreciated my–”

“Steven. You cannot allow him to turn you to the dark side.” Dustin reached out and grabbed Steve’s wrist, which was a very weird thing that did not prove to comfort Steve all that much. “You are strong. You have the makings of a Jedi Knight. You can’t let him corrupt your spirit, man. Anger is not the way.”

“Okay, yes, cool,” Steve said, extricating his hand. “I will, uh, not do that. You know, I actually really have to get some of this homework done, so. I’m pretty sure that if you go back down there and apologize, Mike’ll take you back. You’re best friends. Just tell him you weren’t trying to steal his girl.”

Dustin nodded solemnly. “Sage advice. I guess I could give it a try.” 

Steve never thought he’d be happier to do his homework in peace.

He kept trying not to think of it, but it crept its way in anyways. Billy wasn’t corrupting him. He couldn’t corrupt him, because they weren’t even friends. They weren’t even anything. But then, why did he feel this compulsion to defend Billy to Dustin? Why did he care what anyone thought of Billy?

And it’s not like Steve could even contradict Dustin. He had no idea what Billy’s relationship with his sister was like. He hadn’t even known Billy had a sister until a couple of days ago. Step-sister, he corrected himself, remembering the way Billy’s face had tightened up when he’d said that. For all Steve knew, Billy could be going around trying to hit kids with cars. 

Except, there had been that night. He’d seen Billy asleep on the couch, and he’d looked so peaceful. So soft. He even looked a little nice. Nice, like kind. Nice, like pretty.

Steve thought about all the times Billy had called him “pretty boy”, and how they sounded so different from when he called him “King Steve”. 

He shook his head and did his homework and made it through most of the rest of the evening without thinking of Billy.

That is, until ten o’clock rolled around, and Hopper came to pick El up, and Nancy and Jonathan returned and Jonathan left to drive the other boys home, and then Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler came back. They looked surprised to see him there.

Karen cocked her head at Steve. “Did– did Nancy not pay you when she got back? Nancy, I thought I left you with some–”

“Oh, no,” Steve said, shaking his head quickly. “We’re all good. It’s just, uh…” He gestured to Max.

Frowny, glaring Max sitting at the dining table all folded in on herself. Her face was almost as red as her hair, and Steve couldn’t tell if it was from rage or embarrassment. 

“Her brother’s on his way, I’m sure,” Steve said, but he wasn’t sure. It was already half an hour past when Billy was supposed to show up. A horrible thought– was this Steve’s own fault? Had Billy bailed just to spite Steve for walking out on the conversation like that? 

Fifteen more minutes passed. They all sat quietly at the table together, Mr. Wheeler and Karen and Nancy and Mike and Max. Nancy tried to make small talk, and Steve had never in his life cared less about listening to what she had to say. Eventually, Max spoke, something that she hadn’t done up to that point except for a brusque refusal of Karen’s cookie offering. Steve had taken one. Karen’s cookies ruled. 

“If I could just borrow Mike’s bike, I can ride home,” Max said. “I’ll get it back first thing tomorrow.”

“No,” Steve said. “No way, you can’t bike home at night by yourself. Where do you live?” 

She told him, warily, and Steve gleaned a little bit more insight into the mysterious life of Billy Hargrove. The address she gave him wasn’t in the best part of town. It certainly wasn’t walkable from Steve’s house– Billy must have found his car that morning in order to get himself home. Steve wished he would have accepted a ride. Steve wished a lot of things.

“I’ll drive you,” Steve announced, standing up, hands on his hips like it was already settled and brooked no debate. “He probably just got caught up with something, but it’s late. I’ve got to get you home.”

The ride was quiet, and tense, and felt longer than it actually was. Halfway through, his hand hovered over the stereo, and he asked, “Do you want me to–?” But she shook her head, so he left it off.

“I’m sure he’s caught up,” Steve repeated. The words cut through the silence with all the hacking grace of a machete. “I know he’d come for you if he could.”

“What do you know?”

“No, nothing. I just mean– he cares about you.”

Max stared out the window so he couldn’t see her expression, but her shoulders were tight. “He told you about me?”

Steve glanced over to her, hands tight on the steering wheel, maintaining a steady pace through the darkness despite the acceleration of his heartbeat. “What?”

“Did he ever tell you about me?”

Steve swallowed. “I– no. But we aren’t friends, really, we just go to–”

“Then why are you defending him?” 

Steve had a lot of things he wanted to say. He couldn’t bring himself to say any of them. Instead, he said: “I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Max said.

“No, I mean, really. He shouldn’t have left you hanging,” Steve said. “It was his job to come get you.”

“He’s an asshole,” Max said, and Steve knew exactly where she’d learned language like that, so he couldn’t really begrudge her for it. “He only cares about himself.”

Steve didn’t reply, didn’t say anything. He wondered if it was true. Had he ever seen Billy do anything for anyone else? Surely not for Tommy or Carol. Not for him. Not for him. Billy just crashed into things, into schools, into backyards, into lives, without regard for the collateral damage he left in his wake. 

Steve felt himself getting angry, and, by the time he pulled up outside Max’s house, had worked out that he was going to drive every street of Hawkins until he found Billy, and then he was going to give him a piece of his mind. Max was a sweet kid, and she didn’t deserve that shit. 

Max’s approach to her front door was sluggish, like she’d rather be anywhere but there. She paused before knocking on the door, and looked up at Steve with these pale, soulful eyes. 

“I got it,” Steve said, before she could say anything. “Don’t worry.” 

He knocked confidently on the door, and it was swung open by a mustached, sturdy-looking man. He was a couple of inches shorter than Steve, but commanded an intense presence nonetheless. Steve straightened under his gaze, doing the thing he did when his parents introduced him to business associates: he became a Harrington.

“Good evening, sir,” Steve said, with an appropriately-sized smile on his face. “The evening ran a little late, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.”

The man gave him a sharp nod, but didn’t look particularly appeased. “I was under the impression that her brother was going to be bringing her home.”

“Yes, that was the plan,” Steve said, nodding along, “but there was an emergency. He had to take one of his friends to the hospital. We’re friends from school, so he called me and asked me to take Max here home.”

Billy’s dad– Steve still couldn’t believe this straight-backed, clean-cut guy was Billy’s dad– gave him a once over. “You’re Tommy Hagan?”

“Ah– no. Steve Harrington, sir.” 

The name apparently didn’t mean anything to the man, which was just as well. Steve wasn’t sure what the current state of his reputation was amongst the adults of Hawkins, if his fall from grace had translated outside the boundaries of the high school. 

“Well,” Billy’s dad finally said. “As long as Maxine here got home safe. Thank you, Steve.” A pause. “Are you a friend of the chief’s, too?” 

“The– the chief’s?”

“You must be,” Billy’s dad continued, “if he trusts you enough to let you pick up Max instead of just driving her home himself.”

“Uh,” Steve said, “well, Chief Hopper got El before–”

“Yeah,” Max said, cutting in. “The chief knows Steve’s dad. It’s all cool. Steve, like, babysits for people sometimes.”

Billy’s dad seemed to accept this. Steve could tell there was some kind of lie happening here, but he wasn’t sure what exactly, or why it was necessary. What fault could anyone find with six nerds sitting in a basement playing some kind of complicated board game? 

But he played along, smiling, said, “Yup,” and Billy’s dad seemed to accept the explanation. 

They exchanged a few more words, Billy’s dad thanked Steve again, and Max disappeared into her house with a glance back over her shoulder at Steve. The man didn’t ask anything more about Billy. 

Steve let out a little huff of breath when he got back in his Beemer. Billy’s dad didn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d think would let Billy get away with all the shit he pulled. Not with his evident concern for Max’s safety. Steve wondered how that worked– maybe Billy just wasn’t the kind of person anyone could control, even his own parent. 

He set off in search of Billy. He didn’t know where Billy would have gone, where he liked to hang out. He tried the junkyard, tried the high school. He grabbed the flashlight out of his trunk and checked out the public pool– it was always closed and locked up at night, but Steve harbored no illusions that a chain-link fence and a CLOSED sign would stop Billy. 

Steve turned up nothing. Billy had pulled a vanishing act. Maybe, Steve thought, he’d just fucked off back to California. Maybe Steve would never see him again.

For whatever reason, the thought just made him angry. Billy was a goddamn wrecking ball. And Max was just a kid. And Steve was– what was Steve? Steve wasn’t Billy’s anything. Obviously. But he still thought he deserved an explanation, or at least a goodbye. Or a bad bye. Any kind of bye. 

He was driving on the high road, on the outskirts of town, cruising around less to find Billy now and more to just drive. He thought about Tammy’s letter, how she talked about flooring it with the windows down when she felt sad. He pushed on the gas a little and felt a lurch of something in his stomach. Fear? Excitement? The two had become more and more indistinguishable lately. 

He sped fast enough that he almost missed the Camaro. 

It was parked at Sattler Quarry. Steve slammed on the brakes. Nobody else was around. His heart thrummed loud, hands squeezing tight at a nervous ten and two. Billy had the only Camaro in town, everybody knew that. It had to be his car. 

A sudden, intrusive thought: people could die at that quarry. It would be so easy to just slip off the edge. He remembered Tommy and his heartbeat picked up even faster. 

He parked the Beemer on the side of the road and approached the quarry. It was dark, so he switched on the flashlight, and every time the light dipped into the expanse of the quarry it just vanished, like it, too, had stumbled and fallen out of existence. 

Steve rounded the car and the light glanced across Billy’s body, prone and slumbering on the hood of the Camaro. Steve felt something. He wasn’t sure what. But it translated easily enough to anger. 

He jabbed Billy hard on the thigh with the butt of the flashlight. “Wake up, jackass.”

Billy came to, disoriented, fuzzy-eyed. He gasped a sharp breath in, and on the exhale Steve could smell stale beer. Jesus Christ. “Wh… Steve?” 

Steve hit him again, hard, smacking the flashlight across Billy’s chest. “Get the fuck up.”

Billy seemed to really wake up at this, jerking into a sitting position and looking around. “What the fuck?”

“Yeah, my question exactly.” Steve resisted the urge to hit him again. “Were you having a good nap? Relaxation day at the spa?” 

“Jesus,” Billy said, squinting into the light that Steve shone at him. “What’s with the third degree?”

“Uh, I don’t know, why don’t you rack your brain and try to figure it out, idiot?”

Billy ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching on the mussed curls and tugging at them. His eyes got sharp. “What time is it?”

“There you go,” Steve said. “It’s–” he checked his watch– ”11:14.”

“Fuck!” Billy hopped off the hood of the car.

“I took her home.”

“You what?” Billy whirled on Steve, flaring up. 

“Hey, no, you don’t get to be mad at me for that.” Steve shoved a finger up into Billy’s face. “You’re the one who stranded her without a ride so you could– what, come up here and get plastered? What the hell are you even doing here?”

Billy slapped Steve’s hand down and stepped in close, raging at him, but Steve held his ground. “You had no right,” Billy growled, “to go to my house and get involved in my fucking business. My business, not yours.”

“You made it my business.” Steve planted two fingers into the center of Billy’s chest and pushed. “And oh, right, you’re welcome for covering for you to your dad. He–”

Billy reached forward, fast as a lightning strike, and closed his fist around Steve’s fingers, squeezing them tight. “Don’t,” he said, all quiet. A simmering pot.

“How many times am I supposed to save your ass, huh, Hargrove?” Steve matched Billy’s low intensity. “If you could just give me, like, a rough estimate, that would be great.”

“She’s thirteen, she could have biked home herself.” Billy’s jaw was tight. Hand was tight, crushing Steve’s fingers. 

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Steve said, a soft kind of thunder. He felt mean. He felt angry. He felt out of his mind. “You show up at my house in the middle of the night–”

“Shut the fuck up,” Billy hissed.

“No, I’m done pretending like it didn’t happen.” Steve pressed on. “You show up all beat up, you almost push me into my pool, then you crash on my couch and walk out the door the next day like nothing happened?”

“Sorry!” Billy let go of Steve’s fingers and threw his hands up in the air. But he was still close. Too close, too heavy, too much. He always was. “I’m so, so sorry, Harrington, that I dared step foot in your gorgeous fucking mansion! Bet it spent you days to scrub my fucking blood off your carpet, huh? Or– no, I forgot, you probably pay people for that, right? Well, tell me how much it was and I’ll cut you a check. How about that. Tell me how much that night cost you, and I’ll pay you back, and you never have to think about it again.”

“You’re such a jackass!” Steve pushed him in the chest, and Billy actually stumbled back a step this time. “You think you can just do whatever you want with whoever you want–”

Billy let out a loud, barking laugh at that.

“What?” Steve spat.

“Nothing, pretty boy. Nothing.” Billy had that mean smile on again, the wolf one. “And it’s ‘whomever’. Idiot.”

Steve’s cheeks went red and he remembered why he’d walked out earlier that evening. But there was no walking out, this time. Steve didn’t know how this one was supposed to end. With one of them going over the side of the quarry? “You think that you’re better than me because you get straight A’s or whatever? Because you’re the best at basketball? Because you’re the new king of Hawkins High? Newsflash, none of that bullshit matters in the real world.”

“And what the fuck do you think you know about the real world, Harrington?” 

“I know that once high school’s over, I’m gonna have a life,” Steve said. “I’m gonna have a good job that pays me enough money to live in a nice place, and I’m gonna have a family and people who care about me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And you think I won’t?” Billy stepped in close, again. Steve had long abandoned the flashlight at his side. His eyes had adjusted by now, to the starlit darkness, to the angry curves of Billy’s face. “Because I’m not some fucking pretty boy with a fancy last name rich off his daddy’s money?”

“No,” Steve said. “Because you’re a mean person.”

They were both quiet for a second. Breathing in unison: short, shallow little breaths. Billy was looking at him with a very controlled expression, and Steve didn’t know what was under it. It scared him. 

When Billy did finally speak, it was quiet. “Sure. I’m mean. I’m a bully. But I’m not the one who called my girlfriend a slut in spray-paint for the whole town to see. I’m not the one who called Byers a psycho. Yeah, I heard about that. Tommy talks.” He searched Steve’s eyes. Steve didn’t say anything. What could he say? There was something stuck in his throat. “If you were as sweet and good as you think you are, you’d have friends. So, yeah, I’m the fucking bad guy. But at least I don’t spend my time hanging out with thirteen year olds and pretend that makes me happy.”

“You don’t know me,” Steve whispered.

“I know you.”

Steve stared at Billy. He felt like something was about to crash and burn and die, and he didn’t know what, didn’t know how, but it was going to happen. “We aren’t friends.”

“You’ve made that clear.”

“What, like you want to be?” Steve’s chest was tight. “You’ve been trying to be? What part of this– this whole thing– has been friendly? The part where you hit me? The part where you rag on me every day on the courts? The part where you sleep at my house and then just leave in the morning and pretend like it never happened? Where you freeze me out for a week, make me think I’m crazy, call me stupid?”

“Screw you, Steve,” Billy said softly, and Steve’s name in his mouth felt like violence. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Billy edged in closer. Steve wondered if this was it, if he was finally going to hit him. “You want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“You really want to know what the fuck is wrong with me?” Billy fisted his hands in Steve’s shirt, and Steve braced himself for the impact, and then– 

Billy was kissing him. They were warm, Billy’s lips, and softer than they looked. They fit to Steve’s perfectly, drawn like magnets, and Steve didn’t pull away. Billy smelled like that cologne he always used, strong and embarrassingly pleasant. Steve’s hand went up, and he didn’t know what it was looking for until it found the curls on the side of Billy’s neck. Finally, he knew what they felt like. They were soft, too, and crushed and flattened easily against the grip of Steve’s hand. 

Something was crashing, burning, dying. Steve didn’t pull away.

Billy did. He pulled back with the smallest of gasps and let Steve go, and a certain coldness settled against Steve’s body where Billy had been pressed just a moment ago. All Steve could do was stare, helpless.

Billy was glassy-eyed. A little sound escaped, but it wasn’t a word, little more than a breath. “You’re an asshole,” Billy whispered. And he turned and walked away, from Steve, from the cliff’s edge, to his Camaro. It purred to life and pulled out, slowly, leaving no screech or tire marks or memory of his having been there other than Steve. Steve alone, Steve at the quarry, with the imprint of warmth fading from his lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and i oop

**Author's Note:**

> playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NwDvjW5ZpyzmwoBxjUPW5?si=7_s300_lT7y2CaslpmERpQ


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